When weighing the future of the iron-ore export corridor from the Northern Cape to the Port of Saldanha, the Ore Users Forum (OUF) has a clear understanding of its “north star”, says Kumba Iron Ore integrated sales and operational planning and logistics head Wimpie Pienaar.

Pienaar participated in a panel discussion on ‘Private sector participation and the path to reviving South Africa’s rail and port logistics’ at the Investing in African Mining Indaba 2026, held in Cape Town this week.

“Firstly, we need to make sure that the infrastructure is rehabilitated…what needs to happen on both the rail line and at the Port of Saldanha is that we need to fix the infrastructure,” noted Pienaar.

“Through collaboration between Transnet and the OUF we kicked off a technical assessment back in 2024, and that assessment gave us one version of the truth about what the actual problems are on the corridor.

“So, we know exactly what needs to be done to get the system back to capacity of around 60-million tons for iron-ore.”

The corridor currently transports between 50-million and 55-million tons a year.

“In the long term, the OUF has been vocal in saying that we believe that an integrated concession for that corridor all the way down from the Northern Cape – 861 km – to the Port of Saldanha, would be the best outcome for country,” added Pienaar.

“So – an integrated concession, where a third-party rails manganese and iron-ore on that system, and Transnet remains the asset owner.

“We believe that type of solution is the best chance to restore the system for iron-ore, and to also introduce manganese and ramp up the volumes we are currently seeing.”

Pienaar described the iron-ore journey over the “past couple of years” as “painful”. He was at pains, however, to praise the recent turnaround seen within Transnet, driven by a new leadership team.

“Since 2020 we have seen a decline in performance in the volumes being allocated to exporters on the ore export corridor.

“We then established the OUF, which is the collaboration between the four exporters of iron-ore that share the same destination at the moment.

“Similar to coal, we struggle with two things,” noted Pienaar.

“Firstly, we don’t have an alternative but to rail our volumes down to Saldanha. It doesn’t make competitive sense to put it on trucks.

“We had stranded product stockpiled, and we couldn’t monetise that product.”

The second challenge was the fact that iron-ore exports from the Northern Cape might be big numbers in the domestic context, but the reality was that these volumes were less than 5% of global seaborne iron-ore trade.

“What an uncompetitive logistics system does is that it impacts your competitiveness,” said Pienaar.

“At the end of the day, you compete with gorillas [large global mining companies], and if your logistics cost are too high and your logistics performance is unpredictable, it puts you on the backfoot.”