Springs will be home to the biggest inland port and logistics gateway terminal in Gauteng. Freight and logistics company Transnet on Wednesday announced a historic private-public partnership for a 20 year concession for the construction of the R2.5 billion Tambo Springs international terminal in Gauteng.
Southern Palace was announced as the winner of the 20 year concession contract. Transnet says after completion the terminal will create over 10 000 jobs across Gauteng.
City Deep is currently the only major bounded inland container terminal in Gauteng. However, the terminal faces serious capacity constraints. The Tambo Springs international terminal will go a long way in easing some of the City Deep challenges. Container movement to and from Gauteng is expected to grow to over four million, 20 foot equivalent, units per annum by 2021.
The project will bring all aspects of warehousing, distribution, manufacturing and shipping all in one location. It will also ease road transport and logistics challenges across Gauteng.
“Public private partnerships and venturing with the private sector is going to be critical for us to develop. So Transnet from a freight and logistics perspective is very excited about this and is probably our first large scale venture that we have announced. If the core system of the economy of the country works businesses can thrive and if they can thrive we can create jobs,” says Transnet Chief Business Development Officer Gert De Beer.
This terminal is part of Transnet's plans to ensure S.A has a freight system that works efficiently and effectively at a low cost – Gert De Beer, Chief Business Development Officer pic.twitter.com/oWsrQ8ORHk
— Transnet SOC Ltd (@follow_transnet) June 5, 2019
Transnet says the awarding of the contract to Southern Palace was done in a transparent manner despite the organisation facing leadership challenges and a slew of fraud and corruption charges.
“This was awarded in terms of our private sector participation policy that was recently developed out of good practice. We had it validated last year with external consultants to see if its best practice in terms of venturing, how organs of state venture with private sector. With the whole new board that arrived a year ago that introduced the governance framework , oversight and accountability to ensure good governance and ethical behaviour , we have gone back to ensure and provide evidence to them that this process from inception, starting before they arrived, happened according to the policy.”
Southern Palace Group’s Michael Finn says they are ready to deliver the work expected.
“As a consortium we have appointed a multi-disciplinary team of engineers, project managers, supply developers to make sure that whatever we submitted to Transnet in 2016 we fulfil in terms of our submission that we will create X amount of jobs, that we will employ local labour. There would be a training component to the implementation process so that we upskill people from the community and we intend in fulfilling that,” says Southern Palace Group’s Michael Finn.
Gauteng handles approximately 60 % of the country’s import /export goods. The development will cover 607 hectares and will compromise a range of property development components. Transnet says 81 000 jobs will be created during the construction of the new terminal.
“Tambo Springs terminal, the first phase of it will be able to accommodate 255 000 containers per year, where as opposed to City Deep which has 1.6 million containers per year. The land that is committed to the project is over a thousand hectares of land. The terminal itself will only occupy 67 hectares. In the balance of that there will be an industrial park that will provide value added logistics services like manufacturing and light manufacturing as well as accommodation for the trucking sector, including other retail sectors to support that as well,” says Transactional Manager at Transnet, Lorcan Nurse.
