Sephaku Cement grinding project on-track

Sephaku Cement said its new grinding plant near Delmas in Mpumalanga, South Africa, is 95 per cent complete and is on-track to start production early in the new year.

The 1.4Mta facility will be launched ahead of the company’s 1.2Mta integrated Aganang plant in Lichtenburg, North West.

Recent cold commissioning milestones at the Delmas grinding plant have included the starting of the mill motor, ID fan and mill separator, Heinrich de Beer, engineering project manager at Sephaku Cement has stated. “Clinker offloading is in full swing and in the stage of final setting optimisation," he explained.

Gypsum offloading has also been commissioned with the first gypsum offloaded mid November. In addition, the packing plant is about to be hot commissioned with cement while the palletizer and stretch hood machines have been cold and hot commissioned. “Our first stack of pallets have been wrapped and the full sequential start-up and commissioning of the packing plant is on the cards for the next week,” he said.
       
Roads and intersections are on target to being finished before the end of this month and weigh bridge systems are being implemented imminently, while Telkom is expected to finalise communication installation shortly, according to de Beer.

As a greenfield project, the initial construction of the turnkey project started in November 2011. “Everyone on site is looking forward to getting moving with their work. All buildings including the CCR, administration and sales offices are ready for occupancy,”  de Beer concluded.