The Grindrod Freight Services executive team recently visited Grindrod’s terminal facilities in Richards Bay.
The visit brought to the fore the ‘can-do’ attitude of Grindrod people and the focus on operational excellence throughout the business. It also highlighted the importance of driving key stakeholder relationships within Grindrod. A KPI adopted by Xolani Mbambo and his executive team and filtered down to every part of the business.
To fully appreciated this, one needs only to look at the obstacles the team in Richards Bay faced and the solutions executed.
The allocation of trains to our terminals is critical to delivery of cargo, the export of product and the success of our terminals as well as the South African economy. Grindrod and Transnet implemented workstreams to address the movement of trains and continuously strive for improved efficiencies.
When the fire occurred within the Richards Bay port precinct in October last year, the Grindrod team immediately established a Business Continuity Plan committee and started engaging with various entities and stakeholders. The fire destroyed the conveyors that fed cargo to the port for loading. It also resulted in the loss of power. The Grindrod team placed power generation units at all strategic points within the facility and arranged for the transfer of cargo by road to an allocated laydown area from where Grindrod Stevedores was able to provide a skip loading solution. Concurrent to the above Grindrod engineered a solution for the manual loading by skip for mineral sands from the silo complex. This solution was done on time to meet the customer demand for the first vessel and further engineering was later completed to accommodate a different grade of mineral sand.
Well done to Pieter Venter, Bheka Ndlovu, Christo Coetzee and the rest of the team at the Terminals and Stevedoring operations.
