Portuguese company to build railway from Moatize to new Macuse deep water port

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Portuguese company to build railway from Moatize to new Macuse deep water port

9:38 CAT | 13 Mar 2017

A traveler walks on a deserted platform at the Brussels Zuid/Midi rail station on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016. Trade unions in Brussels and southern Belgium started a 48-hour rail strike which is set to disrupt national traffic and international connections to Paris and London through Thursday. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) Belgium Train Strike

The Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil will be hired to build the railway from the Moatize coal basin, in the western Mozambican province of Tete, to a new deep water port at Macuse, in Zambezia, according to Abdul Carimo, chairperson of the Zambezia Development Corridor (CODIZA).

Interviewed by Radio Mozambique in the Zambezia provincial capital, Quelimane, Carimo said the project, with a cost estimated in excess of 2.3 billion US dollars, “is on a very good path, not only because the price of coal, both thermal and coking coal, has risen significantly, but also because we have been able to launch the international tender”.

Carimo said that bids were received from six companies, from China, Turkey. South Korea, Brazil and Portugal.

“We were discussing, analyzing and assessing for six months and now we have found the winning company”, he added. “We have the price more or less fixed, and we are ready to sign the contract so that the company can start work”.

The railway to Macuse will be the third route for exporting Moatize coal. The other two are the lines to Beira, and to the northern port of Nacala-a-Velha (which cuts across southern Malawi), The Macuse project has two competitive advantages. First, the railway, at between 480 and 500 kilometres in length will be shorter than the lines to Beira or Nacala.

Secondly, Macuse port will be able to receive ships of up to 80,000 tonnes, considerably larger than the ships that can dock at Beira.

The Macuse project is 60 per cent owned by the Italian Thai Development Company of Thailand, 20 per cent by CODIZA and 20 per cent by Mozambique’s publicly owned port and rail company, CFM.

Source: AIM