Glencore weighs restart of mothballed South African coal projects

Glencore is looking again at coal growth projects in South Africa that it was forced to shelve during the country's rail crisis, Murray Houston, chief executive of Glencore's South African coal business, said on 5 August 2026. "For the first time - having had to restructure this business when it fell below 50Mt per annum - we're now actually looking at some growth projects to bring coal on, to meet the improving rail performance," Houston said.

Rail recovery changes the maths

South Africa's thermal coal exports have climbed from a 40-year low of 47.21 million tonnes in 2023 to 52.08 million tonnes in 2024 and 57.66 million tonnes in 2025, helped by Transnet Freight Rail's rollout of 105 new Class 23E locomotives and a new private infrastructure management arrangement on the coal line. Houston said rail capacity could ultimately reach 70 million tonnes a year, though wagon availability may become the next constraint before that ceiling is reached.

By the end of June 2026, coal exports through Richards Bay stood at around 30 million tonnes for the half, keeping the industry on track for further gains this year. Houston said Glencore's South African thermal coal operations delivered a steady 4.1 million tonnes in the first quarter of 2026, broadly matching the same period in 2025.

A cautious restart

Houston was careful to frame the reconsideration as an evaluation rather than a commitment, noting that each five-million-tonne increment of improved rail capacity needs roughly a million tonnes of excess margin to justify new investment. That reflects lessons learned from the previous decade, when miners built capacity ahead of rail capability and were left stranded with coal they could not move to port.

Why it matters

Glencore's South African coal business, which includes mines such as the Goedgevonden opencast operation near Ogies, was one of the hardest hit by the country's logistics collapse, having to cut output and cancel expansion plans. A genuine restart of growth projects by a major like Glencore would be one of the clearest signals yet that miners believe Transnet's turnaround is durable rather than temporary, with knock-on benefits for contractors, rail suppliers and coal-dependent Mpumalanga towns.

Sources

• Miningmx: Glencore weighs restart of South African coal projects, 05 Aug 2026

Photo: A dragline excavator at the Goedgevonden opencast coal mine near Ogies, Mpumalanga. Bob Adams from Amanzimtoti, South Africa, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.