COAL of Africa Ltd (CoAL) has started the search for R4bn to build South Africa’s largest coking coal mine, which will reduce the amount of feedstock the country imports each year for its steel industry.The opencast Makhado project south of Musina, Limpopo, will from end-2016, deliver 2.3-million metric tonnes of coking coal a year and 3.2-million tonnes of thermal coal, which will be used as a by-product credit to reduce the cost of the coking coal to R865/tonne."Once permitting and funding is secured for this project, Makhado could be a game changer for the company," John Meyer of London-based SP Angel said."The company will need strong shareholder support and project finance backing structured around offtake financing to make this work," he said. "South Africa, as always, remains a bit of a wild card but we suspect Haohua Energy will continue to back the company for the hard coking coal element of the project."China’s Haohua, a Beijing-based coal group, owns 23.6% of CoAL, having...
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