Camrail Ships Brakes to Knorr-Bremse South Africa, Eyes In-House Refurbishment Capability Through Training

CAMRAIL, a subsidiary of Africa Global Logistics, announces the shipment of 24 brake units to the South African office of Knorr-Bremse for refurbishment. This initiative is part of the company’s proactive maintenance planning policy and complies with the manufacturer’s requirement that all its components be serviced exclusively by its own facilities.

In parallel, CAMRAIL is actively pursuing certified training programmes from the German manufacturer, as it has already successfully done with other suppliers. The objective is to enable the in-house refurbishment of Knorr-Bremse components at its Bassa workshops in Douala, thereby reinforcing CAMRAIL’s position as a regional benchmark in railway maintenance.

Samy Soro, Director of Rolling Stock at CAMRAIL, emphasises: “CAMRAIL has implemented a rigorously structured maintenance policy. This is evidenced not only by the modernisation of the central workshops in Bassa but also by the detailed planning and monitoring of a wide range of preventive maintenance, overhaul, and inspection operations.”

The refurbishment of these brake units will bolster CAMRAIL’s strategic stock of critical parts and significantly reduce response times for equipment servicing, in alignment with the company’s recently adopted “just-in-time” logistics model.

It is worth noting that under its comprehensive maintenance strategy, CAMRAIL undertakes at least 520 operations, including preventive maintenance for both traction and hauled equipment. Preventive maintenance for traction equipment encompasses major overhauls, minor servicing, sanitation processes, intermediate servicing, and general overhauls. In the case of hauled equipment, it includes general overhauls, minor servicing, safety inspections, and scheduled safety checks.