Case Study: South African Coal Company achieves a scenario-based, data-driven Coal Roadmap for secure supply and infrastructure planning with Lumina Decision Systems

South African Coal Company - Customer Case Study

The South African Coal Company engaged Lumina Decision Systems to help develop a Coal Roadmap that would assess whether South Africa’s coal industry can remain viable in a low‑carbon world. The project needed a rigorous, detailed quantitative model to resolve competing demands for coal between Eskom and exporters, anticipate looming shortfalls at power stations, and account for different coal qualities and political/regulatory uncertainty. Lumina Decision Systems provided this capability using its Analytica modeling software.

Lumina Decision Systems built a scenario‑based Analytica model of the entire coal value chain—mines (by project and coal quality), beneficiation, power stations, coal‑to‑liquids plants and exports—and ran four future worlds to test outcomes. The model identified specific power stations with insufficient coal contracts, predicted coal shortfalls as early as 2015, showed rail constraints limiting exports until the 2020s and the risk of post‑2020 underutilized port/rail capacity, and supported roadmap actions to remediate supply risks and guide strategic transport investment. These quantified findings helped stakeholders agree on priorities by “putting the numbers on the table.”