Re: Rail privatizations.

["William Miller" <backtran@optusnet.com.au>]

Not sure I agree with the premise here Maurie about the rapidly dwindling
cake.Sure NR has been doing it tough and has lost traffic to the other
operators, but this was bound to happen since NR was a monopoly interstate
and it would be unrealistic to expect a new player not to take some of that
share. Having said this, IIRC the transcon market share of rail has
increased overall since competition has come along and the private operators
you mention all seem to have taken some traffic back from road, ATN in Tas
in particular seem to have done this with FA and Austrac also reporting new
traffic that once was hauled by road.

It is difficult to tell what the overall picture is though since I am not
sure the private operators are required to publicly report their tonnage's
like the predecessor State owned ones did.


Maurie Daly <mauried@tpg.com.au> wrote in message
39e664c1.2251947@can-news.tpg.com.au">news:39e664c1.2251947@can-news.tpg.com.au...
> Fairly recently, but before it was known that Freightcorp was to be
> privatised , its CEO indicated that he thought that there was room in
> Australia for only two interstate rail companies ,and that FC was
> going to be one of them.
>
> We now find that its very likely that we will end up with not two ,
> but at least 7 private rail companies.
>
> ASR
> ATN
> Austrac
> FA
> A privatised FC
> A privatised NRC
> A combination of the two above
> A privatised Westrail
>
> This also doesnt even count smaller players like Silverton and NRR or
> Great Northern.
>
> One would also expect that at some stage in the future ,that QR will
> enter the interstate freight business.
>
> Since rail privatization started there hasnt been any shift from road
> back to rail, instead all that has happened is that all the above
> companies are simply competing against each other for a share of a
> rapidly dwindling cake.
> It seems to me that all cant survive ,and that if someone buys both FC
> and NRC for a huge price ,then they will be the first to fall.
> The survivors will be those companies with the least debts,and the
> more flexible loco fleets .
> You would have to rate the likely winners as coming from ATN,ASR and
> FA.
>
> Commenst ??
>
> MD
>