SAVING STEEL
The new process blends various carbon products in a specifically designed briquetting machine to manufacture a high-quality coke briquette, and may reduce South African reliance on metallurgical coal imports
Photo by: Creamer Media
A patented coking coal production process is being introduced to the South African metals sector by black-woman-owned company Vardocap to reduce the sector’s reliance on metallurgical coal imports and drive local beneficiation.
The process, which blends various carbon products in a specifically designed briquetting machine, allows for the manufacturing of a high-quality coke briquette, or carbonite coal. Vardocap has its plant in Mokopane, Limpopo.
Young female black industrialist and Lilitha Coal resources founder Thandi Dywili, partnered with the original Vardocap founders in late 2017 to produce patented carbonite coal. She is now the major shareholder in Vardocap.
The Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) has delivered the first tranche of its R195-million investment in support of this project.
The IDC, through its basic metals unit, focuses on minerals that are important to the metals value chain, the beneficiation of metallic minerals in support of downstream manufacturing, and the production of metals products to spur localisation, export and the metals value chain.
One of the IDC stated aims is “to support industries that can create and preserve jobs through sustainable economic growth”. The unit’s evaluation of projects locally or in the rest of Africa is influenced by the ways in which the projects and their outcomes align with the needs of South Africa, as well as their beneficiation potential.
Vardocap CEO Johan Peens explains that, prior to the partnership with Dywili, Vardocap established a working relationship with Virginia Carbonite, in Virginia, and its cofounder, Dr Dick Wolf.
Vardocap, in cooperation with Wolf, developed a commercial patent for the manufacture of carbonite coal.
“We had a continuous firing kiln that we were about to sell when we partnered with Dr Wolf, who had [not] found [a] company willing to partner with him beyond laboratory testing. However, once we had the patent, we needed to find entry into the metals manufacturing industry . . . that’s where Thandi came in.”
Dywili states that her experience with Lilitha – which supplies raw materials such as ferrochrome, manganese, scrap metal and coal to smelters and foundries – enabled her to approach potential offtakers in the metals manufacturing space.
To date, at least two sintering plants are interested in Vardocap’s product, while a steel manufacturer is working out an offtake agreement.
Vardocap has attained a letter of intent from the steel manufacturer and is using some of the IDC’s investment to expand the plant’s capacity of 4 000 t/m to 10 000 t/m to meet the manufacturer’s demand.
Additionally, Dywili notes that a local coal company has expressed interest in charring some of its coal on the Vardocap premises.
Peens notes that this venture has all the makings of a “massive beneficiation and transformation success story”, should the offtakes come to fruition.
Dywili notes that Vardocap, with its patented technology and emerging partnerships, could in all likelihood be one of the companies at the forefront of beneficiation-focused industrialisation.