Public Enterprises Minister, Malusi Gigaba, oversaw the dispatching of 98 tippler-coal wagons from Port Elizabeth harbour to Mozambique.
The Department says the wagons are the last ones to be shipped from the order book of 200 bought by Rio Tinto from Transnet Rail Engineering's Uitenhage wagon business.
The Uitenhage facility has also supplied rail wagons to Tanzania and Ghana.
"It's not the first of its kind because we've already been exporting to a number of African countries and there are other countries outside of Africa that have shown an interest in the locomotives and wagons that Transnet is able to develop," said Minister Gigaba.
"This positions South Africa as a global original equipment manufacturer. We are well on our way to expanding our business and skills in this regard and therefore improving the revenue of Transnet and growing the South African economy," he said..
"The total order from Rio Tinto in Mozambique is 200 wagons and today we are exporting the final 98 that were manufactured at Transnet's facility in Uitenhage.
This is a total value of R150m."
"We have about 1000 people working in the Uitenhage plant alone. This means that if you take that together with the capacity we have right across the country and if we succeed to grow our business as we intend to, we are going to be able to grow jobs and skills," he added.
"As we open up the Port of Ngqurha tommorrow (Friday) it means that we have a good story to tell South Africa about what we are doing. During this financial year we were able in Uitenhage alone we able to develop revenue of R950m and we hope to expand it to R1.5bn in the next financial year," he said.
"There are many opportunities across the continent and even globally and we intend further to establish a maintainence facility in Mozambique which will then carry the South African flag to other countries."
