Power firm Aggreko to supply SA, Mozambique

SA’s national grid nearly collapsed in 2008, forcing mines and smelters to shut for days.

The crisis cost the country, Africa’s biggest economy, billions of dollars in lost output and hit its neighbours, which depend on SA to supply them with power.

Aggreko, which is the world’s biggest temporary power provider, said yesterday that it had signed power purchase deals with Eskom and Mozambique’s Electricidade de Mocambique (EDM) to supply electricity from the third quarter of this year until July 2014.

Eskom will buy 92MW and EDM the remaining 15MW.

Rupert Soames, Aggreko’s chief executive, said he saw opportunities to replicate the project in the region.

Aggreko could sell power to utilities or directly to private customers, including mines, he said.

As part of the Eskom/EDM deal, valued at $250 million (R2.1 billion) over two years, Aggreko will build gas interconnections, a substation and a 275 kilovolt transmission line.

Part of the infrastructure will go to EDM at the end of the contract.

The gas used in the plant, to be based at the Ressano Garcia border between SA and Mozambique, is part of gas given to Mozambique as a royalty by petrochemicals group Sasol, which is operating the onshore Pande-Temane gas fields.

Soames said the gas-fired power was more expensive than electricity generated by Eskom’s own coal-fired power plants, but declined to give details. – Reuters DURBAN-based property developer the Collins Group has secured a R354-million loan from Nedbank to fund the building of a 51 000m distribution facility in Willowton, Pietermaritzburg.

Murray Collins of the Collins Group said the development was a move to consolidate warehousing into a single warehouse, capitalising on Willowton’s strategic location. – Daily News Reporter