African Rail Co., a closely held rail-logistics company, plans to raise $170 million (R2.8 billion) this year to buy locomotives and wagons to run in South Africa, where the state logistics company is under pressure to improve performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
United Arab Emirates-based ARC was among 11 successful bidders for slots to operate trains on South Africa\u2019s freight network, part of the government\u2019s almost R2 trillion ($119 billion) drive to bring in private companies to boost efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bottlenecks at state-owned Transnet, which also operates the country\u2019s main ports, has been a major constraint on economic growth over the past decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ARC will operate on a line that runs to South Africa\u2019s northeastern border with Mozambique, Chief Executive Officer Youssef Elgonaid said in an interview this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It will also use tracks that connect the commercial hub of Gauteng province to the main port of Durban \u2014 a line that carries the bulk of South Africa\u2019s container cargo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of the funding will also go to regional operations that move copper from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to Mozambique\u2019s Maputo port, the CEO said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing massive excitement about the logistics space,\u201d in part because of rising demand for critical minerals and the need to shift heavy cargoes away from road transport, he said. \u201cRail is the only solution overland for these corridors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company plans to raise about 30% of the $170 million in equity and the rest in debt, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Private equity firms, especially from the Middle East, have shown an interest in providing funding, as well as shipping companies, Elgonaid said, without identifying them. ARC has also spoken to development finance institutions for debt funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reported by Matthew Hill and Paul Burkhardt for Bloomberg<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" African Rail Co. plans to raise $170 million (R2.8 billion) this year to buy locomotives and wagons to run in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":859065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[25326,853,2138],"class_list":["post-859064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-african-rail-co","tag-south-africa","tag-transnet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859064"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":859068,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859064\/revisions\/859068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/859065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}