Dineo Faku
THE COEGA Development Corporation (CDC) anticipates a R28 billion boom from local and foreign investments as it rolls out its metals cluster strategy for 2014 to 2024.
The CDC said yesterday that more than 28 000 people would benefit from the 10-year strategy that was expected to create 8 198 direct and 19 853 indirect jobs centred on the Ngqura port near Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape.
About 20 percent of the Coega industrial development zone (IDZ) property, or 2 000 hectares, would be dedicated to ferrous and non-ferrous metal industries in the next decade.
Several metal sector and mineral beneficiation projects were under way in the Coega IDZ with a “healthy investment pipeline”, Sadick Davids, CDC’s metallurgy business development manager, said.
“We have received a letter of intent from a prospective investor that is planning to construct an R800 million direct reduce iron facility in Zone 11, which will feed into the downstream plants of existing operations to expand the metals value chain, bringing full effect to the beneficiation of South African resources,” Davids said.
He added that a manganese smelter, electromechanical component manufacturing plant, composite manufacturing and steel manufacturing for rail components, valued at a combined R13.6bn, would be converted to feasibility study stages during this year.
“Several projects worth R1.3bn are currently in funding stages, and include an iron ore plant, steel-rolling mill and steel tube manufacturing plant,” Davids said.
The CDC had also received letters of intent from investors for a steel manufacturing plant and a manganese smelter collectively valued at R7.8bn.
“We will intensify investor relation activities and are eager to pursue steel, stainless steel, rolling mills, manufacturing, ferrochrome, ferronickel and ferromanganese smelting projects over the next 10 years,” he said.
The ambitious figures followed a shift in the CDC’s focus from anchor tenants to beneficiation and industrialisation.
Davids said: “Beneficiation and industrialisation create reliable and sustainable economic growth and activity. We have moved from having a single-anchor tenant to a metals-clustered beneficiation strategy.”