MANGANESE
Heavy road haulage continues to absorb mineral volumes where logistics constraints limit smoother movement by rail.
Ngqura exposes South Africa’s 10 mt shift from raid to road About 10 million tonnes of South Africa’s manganese exports still moved by road in 2025, even as the country shipped a record 26.2 million tonnes of the ore. EBC Financial Group (EBC) highlights that mismatch is the reason the planned 16-million-metric-tonne Ngqura manganese terminal in the Eastern Cape is more than a port project. For a country that holds about 70% of global manganese resources, moving close to two-fifths of exports by truck suggests the binding constraint is no longer ore demand. It is the freight system needed to move ore from inland mines to ships at scale.
N gqura’s planned capacity equals about 61% of South Africa’s manganese exports last year. That scale is large enough to change how a meaningful share of ore reaches export markets. EBC notes that the terminal raises export capacity only if more ore reaches the berth by rail. A port facility can load cargo, but it cannot solve an inland bottleneck on its own. David Precious, Senior Markets Analyst at EBC Financial Group, said, “South Africa’s constraint is no longer ore availability or export demand. It is the cost and reliability of moving bulk minerals from mine to port. When a country ships record manganese volumes yet still sends about 10 million tonnes to the coast by road, that points to a freight system that is absorbing demand rather than scaling with it.”
Coal and iron ore already show the cost of weaker logistics Coal exports from Richards Bay Coal Terminal rose 11% to 57.66 million metric tonnes in 2025, the highest level in four years, as rail performance improved. That was still far below the 76 million tonnes exported in 2017. This comparison shows that better rail performance can lift export volumes, but South Africa is still operating well below the capacity it once moved through the system. Kumba Iron Ore reported that rail performance improved to 84% of contracted volumes in 2025, helping raise sales and reduce on-mine stockpiles to 5.7 million tonnes from 6.9 million tonnes a year earlier. That means more ore were moved out of storage and into the export chain as logistics improved. The reverse has also been expensive as Transnet’s
David Precious, Senior Markets Analyst, EBC Financial Group.
10 MODERN MINING www.modernminingmagazine.co.za | JUNE 2026
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