The Grindrod-owned and operated Terminal de Carvão de Matola (TCM) commissioned ELB Engineering Services (Pty) Ltd to reinstate, refurbish, upgrade and build certain aspects of their coal terminal in Maputo, Mozambique.
What follows is a summary of the presentation as presented at the CoalTrans Conference in Johannesburg in September of 2009, touching on a few of the key points of the project and is printed here with the kind permission of Grindrod Terminals.
Phase 1 & 2: Doubling capacity
Phase 1 & 2 consisted of upgrading the terminal to increase the capacity of the plant from two million tons to four million tons per annum, and was completed in March 2009. Phase 3 began shortly after and is due for completion in the third quarter of 2010. This will increase the capacity of the terminal to six million tons per annum.
The terminal, which is situated on the Catembe Channel, a few kilometers upriver from the City of Maputo in Mozambique, is an open storage dry bulk handling terminal customised to handle coal and magnetite.
Currently the terminal is capable of loading Handysize vessels up to about 45,000 tons, but future plans are to dredge the port to 11.0m, which, with the tidal range, will allow for the loading of Panamax vessels.
TCM has its own berth, ship loader, stockpile area, rail tipplers, stacker-reclaimer and conveyor handling system. The recent major refurbishment and construction undertaken during Phase 1 & 2 project increased throughput capacity and operational reliability.
