In the Hunter Valley, our investment has
delivered five new passing loops and
major progress on two flagship projects;
the Nundah Bank and the Maitland to
Minimbah third road. Both projects will be
open to customers in the first half of the
next financial year.
Hunter Valley Network
Following the introduction of the new Hunter
Valley Access Undertaking on 1 July 2011,
ARTC signed long-term contracts directly
with coal producers for volume on the
Hunter Valley network. These ten year rolling
contracts provide much greater certainty of
the substantial infrastructure investment
that is required in order to provide future
network capacity.
ARTC continues to invest in this network
expansion and in 2011-12, 130 million
tonnes of coal was transported across the
network, achieving an increase of 11% on
the 2010-11 result.
As forecast demand for coal is expected to
increase to over 200 mtpa by 2014, ARTC is
confident that its investment strategy will
continue to deliver capacity for the industry
ahead of demand.
Interstate Network
The Interstate network has undergone
substantial upgrade during the year and
this investment will provide further benefits
to our network customers by increasing
capacity and improving the reliability of
train operations.
Extensive work is also being undertaken on
the Sydney to Melbourne rail line in response
to poor ballast condition and the $134 million
Ballast Rehabilitation Program commenced
in December 2011 to restore the line to an
acceptable operating condition.
Investment in re-railing and passing loops in
South Australia has meant the Company has
been in an excellent position to cater for the
growth in minerals traffic with IMX resources
doubling the amount of magnetite-copper
being transported by rail from their mine at
Cairn Hill to Port Adelaide.
The re-sleepering of the Interstate network,
which is now nearly 100% concrete sleepers,
will help maintain track reliability for
our customers, whether they’re running
intermodal, grain, minerals or steel products
across the rail network.
Growth in these key areas is reflected by a
13% increase in Gross Tonne Kilometres*
this year on the previous financial year, to
62.3 billion GTK.
Safety
Nothing is more important than every
one of our people returning home safely
after a day’s work. Safety remains ARTC’s
first priority.
Over the last 12 months we have seen a
reduction in our lost time injury frequency
rate and an increase in our medically treated
injury frequency rate. In the coming year,
ARTC will be examining ways it can reduce
workplace injuries even further.
Unfortunately the death of a Transfield
worker on our Interstate network in May this
year was a sad reminder of just how vigilant
we all must be when it comes to the safety of
* Gross Tonne Kilometres is a measure that represents the
total weight of goods transported multiplied by the total
distance travelled.
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