South Africa: Sephaku to start Lichtenburg quarry

Sephaku Cement is scheduled to start quarry operations near Lichtenburg, South Africa, early in the New Year. A contractor for the mining work is still to be named, but Pieter Fourie, CEO of  Sephaku Cement, said the first limestone would be produced in March 2014.

“We’ve outsourced the mining and we’ve also included in their scope, empowerment and enterprise development,” Fourie said.

Work has begun on the main haul road and mining will take place on three faces to assure the correct quality limestone mix for the cement manufacturing operation. Mining will take place at a rate of 2-2.5Mta of limestone for the next 30 years.

Sephaku Holdings CEO, Dr Lelau Mohuba, said: “We’ll have our first bag of cement in January, a little over a month from today,” adding that cement production was expected to be at steady state in 2015.
Sephaku Cement’s Aganang operation will produce at a rate of 6000tpd of clinker and 1.2Mta of cement.

Clinker produced at Aganang will be used at Delmas, where Sephaku has a grinding plant. The company, which will use fly ash as an extender, expects to be South Africa’s lowest-cost producer, and the country’s first new entrant since 1934.

Sephaku Holdings on Wednesday reported an operating profit of ZAR33.8m (US$3.3m) for the six months to 30 September compared with a ZAR10.1m loss for 2012. The group achieved revenue of ZAR301.6m from no revenue for the same period in 2012, following its acquisition of mixed-concrete company Metier. Projected sales volumes point to capacity being take up by 2017.