South Africa: Eskom’s demands creating a boom for coal producers and problems for local industry use

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Power utility Eskom has identified low coal stocks, together with poor coal quality and wet coal as the key culprit of the current energy crisis South Africa is experiencing. South Africa has been hard hit by power cuts that forced mines to shut for five days during late January.

This hunger for coal has led to a rise in the local price of coal, that is hitting other industry users of the energy source hard.

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There are 8 000 industrial boilers burning coal, in agriculture, sugar, textile, cement, brick-making and lime, among other industries, and because Eskom is taking everything that is coming out of the mines, these industries are suffering.”

Falcon continues, “These industries are buying whatever they can get, whether it is suitable for their boilers or not. About 90% of the boilers in operation, this figure excludes Eskom, were bought at least three or four decades ago when high-quality coal was available to them.

http://www.miningweekly.co.za/article.php?a_id=128065