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03/05/2013 (On-The-Air)

safm3may2013

3rd May 2013

By: Martin Creamer

Creamer Media Editor

  

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

Gwala: Anglo American’s much-publicised private power project has been put on hold.

Creamer: Yes, we have been talking about the Khanyisa project 450 MW and it was going to be a public-private partnership.  This was going to be a baseload and that is what we are looking for in South Africa.  Interestingly it was also going to be coal-fired and it had an environmental angle to it because it is going to take discarded waste-coal and turn that into energy. 

It would have also have created access to international finance so it wouldn’t have actually been Anglo American building the power station, but Anglo American giving a power purchase agreement.  On the basis of that a global generator of power coming in as a professional and generating that and organising with Eskom to wheel the power, which we haven’t had before.

We have got the grid, but you have to organise with Eskom to be able to put power in, in Mpumalanga, which was going to be the case here, using this discard waste-coal from the old mine dumps there and then taking it out in North West at the platinum mines. 

This is where the problem comes in, this is why there has been a deferment, why there is the delay, because of the woes of platinum industry.  It is seen as inappropriate to burden the Anglo American Platinum balance sheet with $1-billion load at the moment and until things and the outlook improves for platinum, this is being put on hold.

Hopefully it will go ahead because they are talking all the time.  It will only really come through in 2015, so by that stage perhaps platinum will be in a much better state and need that power.  They are going to retalk to the investment people and hopefully it will go ahead, but for the moment it is deferred.

Gwala: Steps are being taken to entrench Ekurhuleni on the East Rand as the workshop of the African continent. 

Creamer: There are two fantastic assets in Ekurhuleni and what we are talking about here is east of Johannesburg, what we used to call the East Rand.  It takes in 3-million people and its two big assets there is its airport and its industry.  People are realising that you can leverage off this. 

We are talking about OR Tambo, which is the biggest freight and passenger airport in Africa. We are talking about a potential industrial workshop, which could be Africa’s biggest.  It is already got 41 000 industrial enterprises in Ekurhuleni, just east of Johannesburg here, with 30% of that manufacturing and employing 155 000 people. 

They are saying that in the 18th century the big thing was seaports.  The seaports led to the development and location of development.  In the 19th century it was railways that stimulated all that activity.  In the 20th century it was highways where you got the location of development around the highways.  The 21st century you’ve got airports.  

That is way this great aerotropolis idea is going ahead, championed by the Mayor of Ekurhuleni Mondli Gungubele.  He is in close contact with one of the great thinkers in this, the man from North Carolina, Centre for Air Commerce, Prof John Kasarda, who says, “well done Ekurhuleni, this is the way to think”. 

There are another 80 places in the world that are thinking like this like Korea, China and India.  Airports have become like a physical internet that links the global to the local.  They become faster and quicker moving and spontaneously a lot of industries develop around airports.

If you put your mind to it and actually plan it and be innovative there can be a lot more socio-economic spin-off and that is what the aerotropolis masterplan is all about and it is being put together by a man who also created our Gautrain, Jack van der Merwe.

Gwala: A new R500-million investment is strengthening the Western Cape as a global call-centre hub.

Creamer: Several years back, a lot of the Gauteng people were talking about call centres and the potential there. A lot of people in South Africa were saying that we are in the right time zone and that we have got the right language so we have a lot of opportunity to get into call centres.

But it seems like it’s only the Western Cape that is really created the enabling environment and how they are benefiting from it now.  The call centre sector is worth R8-billion to the Western Cape and 38 000 jobs.  We are talking about employing young people.  Most of the people employed in that 38 000 job category there are people with matric who are 17 to 35 and their entry-level pay is R6 500. 

This has become a big factor in the Western Cape where this activity is now rolling-out.  Our call-centres have won two international awards and this is what is giving confidence to the latest investor, Capita, which has come in on behalf of the mobile phone company O2 in the UK, which has got one million customers. 

They are saying that South Africa seems to have the vibe for this, the energy and the enthusiasm.  That is why they are putting another R500-million investment into a call centre here.  They are not the first, there are other big names also in the call centres in the Western Cape.

The blue chip clients are saying that they love the energy and enthusiasm of South African people and this is putting more and more investment into call centres.  I am sure we are going to see more in investment in the Western Cape and we can see the enabling framework has been set-up and we are in the right time zone as well for Europe and the UK.

Gwala: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he’ll be back with us at the same time next week.

 

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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