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the
country; other new regional freight
entrants to the rail market; and, continued
interest in IMEX port shuttle services.
Rail’s market share between Melbourne
and Brisbane has subsequently grown from
25 percent to approximately 27 percent
over the year thanks to the concerted
business development efforts of our
customers and by ARTC.
These factors contributed to Interstate
access revenues growing by 5.4 percent
to $285.7 million for the year – a solid result
given the low inflationary environment
which guides the application of Interstate
access pricing.
The Hunter Valley Business Unit also
had a strong year. 163.4 million tonnes of
high quality export coal was transported
during 2017, up 2.4 percent on 2016 and
non-coal revenue was 28.5 percent above
expectations. This contributed to Business
Unit revenue of $428.1 million for the year.
—PROGRESSING INLAND
RAIL DELIVERY
A key focus in 2017 has been supporting
our Shareholder in determining how best to
deliver and fund the Inland Rail Programme.
This has been a significant and complex
task requiring a large amount of time and
focus by management, the Inland Rail
Programme team as well as the Board.
A defining highlight of this work was
the Government’s commitment to invest
a further $8.4 billion equity into ARTC
to deliver the project, and establish a
Public Private Partnership to build the
infrastructure through the Toowoomba
Range between Gowrie and Kagaru
in Queensland.
We are acutely aware of the close interest
of our Shareholder, customers, and the
community in the program’s delivery. We
also recognise that it must be stakeholder-
driven to be successful. More than 1,000
individual forums relating to the project
have so far been hosted to this end.
Excitingly, the team has commenced the
ten-year delivery schedule developed in
2015; progressed a number of formal
planning approvals; and advanced the
engineering and design elements of each
of the 13 sub-projects of the program.
We have also integrated the program
into ARTC as an independent business unit,
alongside our Hunter Valley and Interstate
Business Units and recruitment of key
leadership positions including the CEO
for Inland Rail is underway.
—A NUMBER OF
INITIATIVES
STRENGTHENING
OUR OPERATIONS
We have undertaken a number of initiatives
through our Continuous Improvement
Program to streamline network operations
to create efficiencies and productivity
improvements during the year.
For example, better maintenance
scheduling and planning has delivered
increased tonnages in the Hunter Valley
network and detailed assessments of our
network in the Central West of NSW have
resulted in non-coal customer payloads
increasing up to 30 percent.
An improved approach to procurement,
particularly with respect to capital projects,
has delivered millions of dollars in savings.
There have, however, been operational
challenges through the year.
We remain conscious of passenger
customer concerns regarding track
condition through North East Victoria.
While we improved track quality part
way through the year during a planned
maintenance window, we recognise the
continued high level of interest in these
regional services and the need for these
expectations to be met.
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