Richards Bay coal exports on track for a 10% rise despite Middle East jitters

Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) said on 22 July 2026 that South African coal exports could rise as much as 10% in 2026, building on the 56.5 million tonnes shipped in 2025. Exports stood at just over 30 million tonnes by the end of June, roughly on pace with a 60 million tonne full-year forecast, with an optimistic scenario putting the total closer to 62 million tonnes. The terminal's chief executive said Transnet's rail network had "immediately hit their straps again which is unusual and encouraging" after a derailment in June cost roughly 700,000 tonnes of lost throughput, with security-related disruptions to the freight rail line also down to their lowest levels since 2020.

Export prices, meanwhile, remained subdued relative to the crisis-era spike of 2022. Benchmark thermal coal prices out of Richards Bay were sitting around $103 a tonne, a fraction of the roughly $400 a tonne briefly reached after the invasion of Ukraine disrupted European energy markets. The terminal's leadership said stock levels remained consistent, with no sign of the sudden drawdowns that might have signalled a supply scramble tied to renewed tensions in the Middle East.

Why the rail recovery matters more than the price

For South African coal exporters, 2026's story was less about price, which stayed range-bound, than about logistics: years of underperformance on the Richards Bay rail corridor had left exporters unable to move coal to port even when demand existed. The deployment of 102 new locomotives and a marked reduction in cable theft and other security incidents allowed volumes to recover toward levels last seen before Transnet's operational crisis, offering a rare logistics success story within South African mining even as commodity prices themselves stayed largely flat.

Asian demand still anchors the trade

India remained the dominant destination for RBCT's cargoes, part of an Asian market that has consistently absorbed the large majority of South African thermal coal exports, insulating Richards Bay's volumes from the structural decline in European coal demand.

Logistics analysts said the terminal's recovery offered a rare piece of good news for a Transnet freight network that had spent years as one of the most persistent constraints on South African mining exports across multiple commodities, from coal to manganese and chrome.

Sources

• Miningmx: SA coal exports could rise 10% in 2026, says terminal, 22 Jul 2026

Photo: Richards Bay Coal Terminal, South Africa's main coal export facility. Ossewa, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.