Coles, Woolworths enlist more trucks after derailed freight train shuts key railway line

Coles and Woolworths have hired extra trucks to keep WA supplied while repairs get underway following a train derailment in South Australia that has blocked a vital rail route.

The derailment this week — which is affecting rail services between Sydney and Perth, Melbourne and Perth, as well as Adelaide and Darwin — has prompted fresh calls for the Federal Government to ramp up investment on vital road and rail infrastructures.

The train partially derailed on the East West rail corridor north of Port Pirie, in South Australia’s mid-north late on Tuesday, leaving the rail line with extensive damage.

But Western Roads Federation chief executive Cam Dumesny expects minimal disruption, saying Coles and Woolworths have invested significantly to upgrade their warehouses in WA and “build up buffer stocks”. He said the supermarkets would have also hired more trucks to move stocks into the State.

Operator the Australian Rail Track Corporation expects services to resume on Saturday evening, but warned extreme heat in SA this week could slow repairs.

Mr Dumesny said the Federal Government needed to “seriously look at the road-rail resilience between WA, SA and the Northern Territory,” saying these links were “highly vulnerable to increasing climatic impacts”.

“The great advantage of the logistics industry is that it just gets on and fixes problems. The great weakness of the industry is it just gets on and fixes problems,” he said.

“If people aren’t seeing the shelves bare then it’s not a political concern.”

In early 2024, the trans-Australian rail line — which connects WA to the Eastern States — was damaged for the second time in two years after it was covered by floodwater near Rawlinna, causing supply issues for major supermarkets.

A Coles spokesman said there were no major impacts for WA customers as a result of the latest SA rail closure, with deliveries already en route via road.

“We are keeping a close eye on the situation, but have plenty of stock already in WA to keep our stores stocked,” he said.

A Woolworths spokeswoman said it had invested $100 million into its Perth warehouse, allowing it “to hold more stock and create a buffer for transport disruption such as this”.

“We will draw on the additional stock in our Perth warehouse to minimise the impact of delayed deliveries from the east coast,” she said.

“As a result, we don’t expect a significant impact to our stores at this time. Additionally, most of the meat, fruit, veg and eggs sold in our WA stores come from right here in WA.”

The Leah Weckert-led Coles in the past has called for upgrades to the trans-Australia rail line, with Coles’ percentage of packaged goods delivered in full and on time to its Perth distribution centre slumping to nearly 50 per cent in March 2024.

The proportion fell to 40 per cent in early 2022, during floods in SA that kept the train line out of action for nearly a month.