We noted with interest your piece that our "new image irks the public", Sowetan, July 25. We would appreciate the opportunity to explain the exercise to that irate segment of the public.

We noted with interest your piece that our "new image irks the public", Sowetan, July 25. We would appreciate the opportunity to explain the exercise to that irate segment of the public.

We consulted our stakeholders before this exercise and stakeholders, including customers, suggested that we should refresh Transnet's corporate identity.

At a press briefing last Monday to unveil our new corporate identity, a respected journalist, Patrick O'Leary, the publisher of FleetWatch, asked a legitimate question that applies to any re-branding exercise: Are we not just sprucing up our image without real service delivery improvements?

Our results of the last three years partly answer O'Leary's question.

Transnet has been making incremental improvements in service delivery. Moreover, the re-branding exercise is the culmination of our business restructuring and integration, aimed at ensuring more efficiency and better service.

The other part of the answer is to be found in messages of endorsement and customer testimonials.

Evidence of the new company will come out this week, when we publish our latest annual report. We fail to see how the sale of Freight Dynamics, our road haulier, could conceivably help us "win over anxious members of the public and jittery stakeholders".

Transnet is a business-to-business company.

The sale of Freight Dynamics and that of every other non-core asset is being done solely to refocus the business on freight transport and logistics.

Maria Ramos, Transnet's group chief executive, is misrepresented by a direct quote attributed to her.

Our position is: our biggest challenges and opportunities lie in optimising the performance of Transnet Freight Rail's general freight business.

We're investing heavily in improving the performance of this line.

John Dludlu, Transnet spokesman