Lobito - The Lobito Atlantic Railway consortium, assigned to the Lobito Corridor, transported 125,000 tons of general cargo in 2024, including forty thousand tons of copper and seventeen thousand tons of sulphur, ANGOP reported on Monday in Luanda.
The aforementioned assessment was made by its Chairman of the Board of Directors, Francisco França, on the sidelines of an activity in the scope of the celebrations of the 97th anniversary of the Port of Lobito.
According to him, 4,263 trains were registered, of which 123 international, 320 were domestic, 3,541 passenger and 279 trains services.
He also reported that fourteen locomotives and one hundred and seventeen wagons were refurbished for international traffic.
One of the most notable operations, according to Francisco França, was the first reception of a ship at the mining terminal, with 40,000 tons of sulfur.
“Throughout the year, 515 wagons were loaded and significant investments were made in infrastructure and equipment, including 400 containers,” he said.
“We are increasingly increasing our capacity in terms of volume,” he said.
Regarding safety, monitoring systems were implemented, incident reports were issued and daily dialogues were held.
Regarding operations, the CEO said that it takes LAR six days to make the transit from its terminal in Lobito to the border in Luau, Moxico Province. From there, the locomotives from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continue to the border and take them to the town of Poloesi.
“Our locomotives do not enter the DRC because they are too heavy, so the Congo National Railway Company (SNCC), comes to the border to collect and bring our wagons,” he explained.
He explained that, within the DRC, operations take longer due to the poor state of its infrastructure and bureaucratic issues, taking between 15 and 20 days.
He recalled that in the southern part of Africa there are other competitors, namely Walvis Bay, Namibia, Beira in Mozambique, Durban (South Africa) and Dar-es-Salam (Tanzania), whose last two are the most competitive.
The CEO reported that, in the future, all cargo will be transported in twenty-foot containers, coupled to wagons, while open containers will be used to handle domestic cargo.
LAR currently has 779 employees and expects to reach around a thousand by the end of the year, according to the director.
It is made up of three companies, namely the Swiss company Trafigura, the Belgian company Vecturis, and the Portuguese company MotaEngil.
It won the international tender on 4 September 2021 and the contract for the transfer of the concession for the railway services supporting the Lobito Corridor was signed on 4 July 2023.
TC/CRB/MRA/jmc
