Three more companies will soon start mining coal in the Moatize district of Mozambique’s Tete province, Mineral Resources provincial director Manuel Sithole has reported. They will join four others already extracting coal in the district. The three new companies are Midwest Africa, Minas de Revuboé and Ncondezi Energy. All three have 25-year mining concessions, which can be renewed. Sithole gave no information as to the quantities of coal the companies expected to mine nor the amounts of the investments they have made and will make. (The four groups already mining coal in Tete are Vale, Rio Tinto, Jindal Steel & Power and Beacon Hill.)

Midwest Africa Limitada, which is based in Mozambique, was reported last year to be investing €527-million in its coal project in Tete. Very little information is available.

Minas de Revuboé is a Mozambican registered joint venture between Australia’s Talbot Group Investments, Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation and South Korea’s Posco. The unlisted Talbot Group, though subsidiary companies, holds 58.9% of Revuboé, with Nippon Steel & Sumitomo having 33.3% and Posco has the rest. Revuboé will be an open pit operation with a potential full capacity of 17-million tons/year (Mt/y) of coking and thermal coal. Its coal handling processing plant will have a capacity of 2 400 t/h of coal.

London AIM-listed Ncondezi Energy, previously Ncondezi Coal, is developing an integrated thermal coal mine and 300 MW power plant. The mine will be a contractor-operated openpit, which will supply 1.3 Mt/y of coal along a 2 km conveyor belt to the power station for 25 years. The mine has a measured resource of 120-million mineable tons in situ.

At the start of this month, Ncondezi announced that it had received four bids from globally recognised companies for the engineering, procurement and construction contract for the power station. All the bidders are offering fixed price lump sum engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning turnkey contracts. The 300 MW power plant will be composed of two 150 MW generating units employing circulating fluidised bed technology. The bids are now under consideration and Ncondezi will announce the preferred bidder during the second quarter of this year. Commissioning is expected during 2017, with commercial operations starting during the first half of 2018.

This power plant is intended to be just the first step in a programme that could reach a generating capacity of 1 800 MW, constructed in 300 MW phases. State-owned power utility Electricidade de Moçambique has the right to acquire 5% of Ncondezi’s project, with the option to buy 10% more at market prices. Another 5% will be made available for Mozambicans to buy, up to 2022/23.

Separately, Mozambique’s Investment Promotion Centre has reported that during last year it approved 418 foreign investment projects in the country, worth a total of $1.363-billion. Total investment came to $4.224-billion in 515 projects, including $569.7- million local investment and almost $2.291-billion in supplies and loans. The sector which attracted the most investment was industry, which includes the mining and hydrocarbons sectors. This attracted $1.613-billion. Agriculture and agribusiness came second, at $878-million, followed by transport and communications (also highly relevant to the mining and hydrocarbons sectors) at $590-million, services at $491-million, tourism and hospitality at $370-million and construction and public works at $277-million.

In terms of origin, the biggest source of foreign investment last year was South Africa, responsible for $364-million, followed by China ($229-million) and then Portugal ($171-million). The rest of the top ten foreign investors were Switzerland ($148-million), Germany ($140-million), the UAE ($53-million), Uganda ($37-million), Mauritius ($29-million), Italy ($27-million) and the UK ($25-million).