Edenville Energy PLC (LON:EDL) Chief Executive Officer Rufus Short caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss their Rukwa Coal to Power project update
Q1: Now, good news in today’s project update, could you talk us through the highlights?
A1: Well we’re progressing with different parts of the project after getting the mining licence back in late February.
Firstly, we started some site works there to upgrade some existing roads and access along with creating some new accesses to new areas that we want to be working in, that work kicked off in late May and has been going through June and into July. We’ve just about completed the essential work and that is approximately about 17 kilometres of roads that have been either upgraded or newly built and along with local access roads to various local farms and villages as part of our corporate social responsibility programme So equipment still on site and we’re completing that work now and some of that equipment will stay on site to work on taking out our bulk sample which is another part of the project, we’ve mentioned it in today’s new release. The bulk sample is basically several tonnes of material that will go down to South Africa and be tested in laboratories in South Africa and washed appropriately so we’ll gain a very good analysis of the composition of the characteristics of the coal. That is both for any pre-treatment to the coal prior to putting it into the power station and also for the actual power station design itself, the type of piping that is needed and the type of boiler and that relevant type of information that is needed for the engineers who design our plant.
We’ve also moved forward with our environmental studies and our ESIA study, our Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, for the power plant, now that sort of goes in several phases, the phase that is being completed at the moment is being done by Tansheq, our Tanzanian consultant. They’ve done several of these types of projects before so they’re familiar with what they’re doing, it’s not just a technical exercise it’s a social exercise and there’s quite a long list of different people with quite extensive qualifications so we’ll be working on gathering that data and assessing that data and that’s being kicked off over the next three months. That then feeds into an overall complete study that will be put forward to the Tanzanian authorities for compliance purposes and there’s a part of that study that is going to be internationally compliant and that’s going to be worked on by consultants from overseas who Tansheq are teamed up with and that will allow the whole study to be World Bank/IFC compliant so the financing and organisation of the next stage will be arranged in a way that what we know the project is compliant from an environmental prospective.
Q2: Now you touched on this earlier but how is the upgrade work going?
A2: We’re just about finished, like I said there’s several kilometres of roads, there’s around 10 kilometres of roads on the immediate mine site that we’ve either upgraded or built, we’ve built a new road up to the proposed power plant, I say proposed power plant because that’s what we’re looking at at the moment, it may not be the final position but we believe it’s going to be close to there. There’s also around 7 kilometres of roads around the site that we’ve worked on and access roads into the local villages so it’s looking neat and tidy the site at the moment.
Q3: How are your relationships with the equipment suppliers and the EPC groups developing?
A3: Ok, over the last couple of months we’ve had site visits and meetings in Tanzania with several groups and I think the relationships are very strong and I would say that they’re moderately advanced. We’re not just talking to one or two groups to do everything, you know take the whole project and do everything, we’re talking to different groups according to their specifications. So yes, there’s EPC groups who would be suited to the EPC contract, there’s financiers that would be suited to providing the finance and there’s engineering groups and consultants that would be suited to doing the pre-development engineering work and also monitoring the construction as it goes along from a client perspective. So really what we aim to do is to bring together two or three groups that are the most suitable for the project and we’ve had a really big expression of interest from a wide range of groups from China to Korea to India to western countries such as Germany and even the United States so we’re very confident we’re going to use the right people. Part of this is reliant on Tanesco and how Tanesco now moves forward with their planning for the project and the power line that’s associated with it so once we have those areas with Tanesco firmed up then we expect to obviously firm up the relationships with the other groups that will be involved.
Q4: Now you mentioned a placing earlier, what will the proceeds from that be used for?
A4: Well, much of what I’ve just spoken about. Some of this is quite labour-intensive and capital-intensive work, the studies etc., there’s several meeting we have to hold with local organisations and local stakeholders so there’s that. There’s the bulk sampling, that goes through a process of extraction and transport and then analysis and we’ve got other ongoing jobs that we’re looking to start as well along with developing these concepts with Tanesco. So there’s plenty of projects that we can move along with now and it’s really starting to take shape in a serious way now the project.
