Vale moves ahead with Mozambique rail project

Maputo, Mozambique — 20 March 2013 – Brazilian mining giant Vale has awarded Portuguese construction company Somague two construction projects in Mozambique to the value of US$228 million. They form part of the ambitious overall project on which Vale will be spending a total of US$4.5 billion.

Macauhub News Agency quotes Portuguese newspaper Diário Económico as reporting that the two projects are for the Nacala railway corridor, specifically, “reconstruction of the railway facility of the Nacala line, over approximately 600km.”

The Nacala railroad corridor project is intended to provide a logistical solution for transporting coal mined in Moatize, in Tete province, in northern Mozambique, as an alternative to the overloaded and physically unreliable Sena line to Beira.

The new railroad corridor is a total of 912km long and links the Moatize mine, 20km northeast of the city of Tete, to the port of Nacala-a-Velha, on the Indian Octheean, along a route that also passes through Malawi.

At the end of the process to rebuild the railway, the Nacala railroad corridor is expected to have capacity to carry anything up to 30Mtpa of coal.

Source: Macauhub News Agency. For more information, click here.