(Reuters) -A South African court has ordered China’s CRRC E-Loco to release locomotive spares it withheld from Transnet in a long-running contract dispute, Transnet’s CEO said on Thursday, boosting the freight rail operator’s plans to improve performance.
The two parties have engaged in legal battles after Transnet halted the supply of 1,064 locomotives from four original equipment suppliers, including CRRC E-Loco, saying that 2014 contracts worth 54.4 billion rand ($3.18 billion) had been unlawfully awarded by the previous company leadership.
In 2023, Transnet said 161 locomotives supplied by CRRC E-Loco were not running due to the Chinese company withholding spares and maintenance support, impacting Transnet’s freight rail operations.
Transnet, which insists it already paid for the parts under the disputed contract before it was terminated, won a separate court order last July stopping CRRC E-Loco from selling or relocating parts already in South Africa.
Transnet CEO Michelle Phillips, speaking at a mining conference in Johannesburg, said Transnet had recently won another court order related to handover of the spares, which were held in warehouses in the country.
“I was not going to pay for my own parts again. We went back to court, and we then got an order giving the CRRC five days to deliver those parts to Transnet,” Phillips said.
“So these last few days, we’ve been accessing those (parts). We are busy doing full inventory of all of those parts,” she added.
CRRC E-Loco was not immediately available to comment.
Transnet’s dispute with CRRC E-Loco, which also includes outstanding locomotives that were not supplied under the terminated contract, has worsened the state-owned logistics firm’s equipment shortages.
The company’s performance has also been impacted by cable theft and vandalism of its infrastructure. Its freight volumes have fallen from a peak of 226 million metric tons in 2017/18 to 160 million metric tons in the 2024/25 financial year.
($1 = 17.1057 rand)
(Reporting by Nelson BanyaEditing by Mark Potter)
