STiR coffee and tea magazine

STiR coffee and tea 45 By Dan Bolton C ompleting the Tanzania phase of the East African Community's $25 billion rail network, built to modern standard gauge, will speed up and economize the transport of tea and coffee. Planners say 30% to 40% of truck-hauled cargo could be transported via rail at a cost between $0.08 and $0.10 per ton per kilometer. Assuming additional loading costs add an extra $20 per ton, it would cost $92 per ton to transport tea 800 kilometers from Kericho, Kenya, to Mombasa. Traveling the same distance by truck would cost $124 per ton and take 12.5 hours. Average road freight, handling, and labor associated with a convoy of 10 intermodal trucks is far more expensive and much slower than piggybacking two 40-foot contain- ers on five freight cars. It is also more dangerous. Trucks are frequently hijacked or forced to offload their cargo or fuel. The Kenya Tea Development Authority transports 20,000 packages of tea weekly to the port via the new rail system. In June 2022, Kenya Railways Managing Director Phillip Mainga assured KTDA that the rail network has the potential to handle all the cargo it can bring. "At the moment, we are running 9 to 11 freight trains every day between Mombasa and Nairobi, and we can do even more if need be," he told the East African. East African Railways Tanzania Segments Nearing Completion Newly arrived locomotives and train cars built by Hyundai Rotem in South Korea. The standard gauge rail (SGR) replaces narrow gauge tracks installed a century ago. Photo courtesy Tanzania Rail Corp. Initiated in 2004, the 25-year Railways Master Plan to rejuvenate East Africa's narrow-gauge tracks will not only open a vast expanse of land-locked tea and cof- fee lands in Uganda, Rwanda, and western Tanzania but also pave the way for future growth and development in the region. The first phase of improvements was completed in Kenya in 2017 along a 293- mile (472-km) stretch of track from Nai- robi to Mombasa. Freight and passenger service along this corridor brought pros- perity and economic alternatives for tea producers, who export 95% of that coun- try's annual harvest. The same will be true along five stretches of track linking the port at Dar es Salaam to the land-locked Congo, Bu- rundi, Rwanda, and Uganda. Tanzania maintains 3,676 km of rail- way lines operated by two railway sys- tems, Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC) and Tanzania – Zambia Railways (TAZARA). In the 1960s, China offered to build a railroad between Tanzania and

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