Atterbury South Africa’s property development team yesterday began construction of a 12 500 square metre light industrial site at Richmond Park, just north of Cape Town, for a facility that will be home to Africa’s first dedicated gigawatt battery storage manufacturing plant.
Kaloyani Dimov, the CEO of Solar MD, speaking at an event to mark the start of construction, said demand for their lithium-ion energy storage solutions was robust, driven to a large extent by load shedding. And with sales in Africa and to Europe, they had run out of space at their existing facility in Cape Town’s industrial park, Montague Gardens, which the company had been using since 2018.
The new building at Richmond Park, which will include offices as well as manufacturing and storage facilities, would be ten times the size of the old facility, he said.
Dimov said they were currently producing around 120 batteries per year, and the South African-owned company plans to increase production up to 300 batteries per year once the new facility is commissioned.
The company currently employs some 120 staff, but this will increase to 240 once the new facility is operational. Dimov said the company produced energy storage solutions under its own brand Solar MD, and the batteries were built according to its own intellectual property. Raw materials, such as lithium-ion cells, are sourced from overseas, Atterbury Head of Development’s Gerrit van der Berg said.
City of Cape Town mayoral committee member for economic growth James Vos said at the event that it was a “red letter day” to see such business investments come to the city, and he believed the development would help Cape Town to secure energy smart solutions for the future.
He said Cape Town had a focus on sustainable energy generation, storage, and distribution development so that there would be enough power for the city and “to get our private sector to work.”
He said the city planned to spend R120 billion over the next ten years on infrastructure to help attract investment and grow employment in the city.
The city’s most recent initiative to aid investment, launched in May, was the formulation of its own “Ease of Doing Business Index”.
It would contain data on building plan approvals, getting land use rights, connecting to the water network, rates clearance certificates, informal trading permits, digitisation of city services, permission to lay fibre internet and pipelines, public land transfers and obtaining a business licence.
Vos said the city had decided on this index which would be available on the city’s website after the World Bank decided to quit its “Ease of Doing Business Index” in 2018 and following a city-wide survey of businesses and engagements with various industry bodies. He said 1.7 million people go to work every morning in Cape Town, which is the highest employment figure for the city since 2008.
Richmond Park is a new 300 000 square metre multi-billion mixed use development by Atterbury on the N7 highway that is currently almost full and which includes tenants such as Takealot, Rubicon and WeBuyCars, with many of the tenants having reserved land for future expansion.
BUSINESS REPORT