On-The-Air (14/10/2016)

Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.  Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: A massive new private-sector investment in electricity generation has been given the green light. 

Creamer: When it comes to coal-fired power, that has been the preserve of Eskom. The private-sector has never got involved, particularly at baseload level. That has now changed. The Department of Energy (DoE) has opened a window for the private-sector to bid.

They have bid R40-billion worth of power generation capacity. Of course, it is not anything like Eskom’s large Medupi and Kusile power stations. This particular award is around 900 MW. The interesting participants include the black-owned Exxaro, which has been mining at Grootegeluk in Limpopo and is coming through now with a project which has got the preferred bid and the nod from the DoE, along with a second one, Khanyisa.

So, we can see a combination of private investment that involves local investment and foreign investment, but always with South African control of 51%. The roll-out of this will mean that there will be coal miners who will mine the coal, they will pass it on to accomplished power generators who know the business.

The two will work in partnership. Another window on this is going to be opened in addition to all the renewables that we are used to. Of course, the renewables are always backed by the green lobby and we said here initially that this has got the green light. I don’t know whether it has a green light in terms of environmental lobby, we see that they are not too happy about coal still being used for power generation.

But, that is how the world is at the moment, it is in a transition and even the people in coal are looking beyond coal. Some of them are in renewables themselves.

Kamwendo: Black women-led businesses hit the high spots this week in both ferrochrome and construction

Creamer: I’ll start with the ferrochrome and I have been watching this ferrochrome for some time now and particularly the Merafe CEO Zanele Matlala.

The way she has actually held this business together during a very tough period is quite interesting to behold. We can see that when prices were down, we can see that they pulled in their horns very well, but we saw them still making a lot of cash. Now, when prices are rising they are starting to increase their production.

That is exactly the way they should do it. Of course, they work in partnership with a giant. They have got a joint venture with Glencore, which is listed in London, Hong Kong and South Africa. It is wonderful to stand on the shoulders of a giant, but still you can see that this is the way to do business.

This is Merafe, which is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, led by Matlala. South Africa’s 300 000 Bafokeng community has the influential shareholding in Merafe.

Then on the construction front, we saw with Aveng, a women-led consortium coming in and getting 45% of the business, still to be ratified in February, and 51% beneficial involvement in the business. All part of black women-led business showing a good foot forward this week.

Kamwendo: The Northern Cape has become the planet’s most favoured site for the breaking of world land speed records.

Creamer: Hakskeenpan is in a remote area of the Kalahari in the Northern Cape. People are waxing lyrical, the global committees that look at land speed records and look at the venues particularly that these take place, are over the moon about what is happening out at Hakskeenpan.

Our flat Northern Cape area is seen as ideal for land speed records, and it is now eclipsing its US rival. The US rival in Utah, they say, is starting to deteriorate to a marked extent. They are looking to a new venue, a new part of the planet that can take all these land speed records and the thumbs up are going for Hakskeenpan, where the local communities there have done an incredible job of removing ton upon ton of rock and stone. This has also astounded the people.

Of course, they have delayed this project for a long time. Every year we hear next year this time it will happen. They have reached a point where they are now fairly convinced that in 365 days, we will see this land speed record where they will try and break it. It is 763 miles an hour, they talk about miles an hour.

This is a rocket-fired vehicle and they want to go beyond that first to 1 300 km an hour initially and then even faster to 1 600 km an hour or 1 000 miles an hour, the sought-after target speed.

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly.