Transnet has won a South African court order compelling China’s CRRC E-Loco to release locomotive spare parts the company had been withholding, Chief Executive Michelle Phillips said on Thursday, offering a boost to the state freight operator’s recovery efforts.
Transnet and CRRC have been locked in litigation since Transnet halted a 2014 procurement of 1,064 locomotives from four original equipment makers, including CRRC, saying the 54.4 billion rand ($3.18 billion) contracts were unlawfully awarded by former management.
In 2023, Transnet said 161 CRRC-supplied locomotives were idle because spares and maintenance support were being withheld, hampering freight operations. A separate court order last July barred CRRC from selling or moving parts already in South Africa.
Phillips told a mining conference in Johannesburg that Transnet had now secured another order for the handover of spares stored in local warehouses. “I was not going to pay for my own parts again. We went back to court, and we then got an order giving CRRC five days to deliver those parts to Transnet,” she said. “So these last few days, we’ve been accessing those parts. We are busy doing a full inventory.”
CRRC E-Loco was not immediately available for comment.
Beyond the dispute over outstanding locomotives and parts, Transnet’s performance has been hit by cable theft and vandalism. Freight volumes have fallen from a peak of 226 million metric tons in 2017/18 to 160 million metric tons in the 2024/25 financial year.