Tuesday, June 2, 2009.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Shannon O'Donnell.

Making headlines today:

Vehicle manufacturer General Motors African Operations president and MD, Steve Koch, said that GM's Chapter 11 filing for bankruptcy protection in the US wouldn't affect General Motors South Africa's operations.

Once the world's biggest vehicle manufacturer, the debt-laden GM said it was forced to rebuild its US operations under a court supervised process. This should ensure it emerged as a smaller, leaner company within the next 60 to 90 days.

This restructuring process would see GM shed the Pontiac, Saturn and Hummer brands, with Opel already sold to Austrian-Canadian parts manufacturer, Magna, and Russia's biggest bank, Sberbank. Saab was also up for disposal.

Brazilian mining company Vale will start building a 1 800 MW thermal power station at its 1,3-billion-dollar Moatize coal project, in northern Mozambique, next year.

Construction of the coal-fired power station is expected to start in March 2010, with the first units - producing 600 MW - operational in December 2012.

Vale has a mining concession in the Tete district of Moatize, which sits on top of a huge and largely unexploited coal basin.

Mining is expected to start next year. At full capacity, Vale expects production of 8,5-million tons of hard coking coal and 2,5-million tons of thermal coal a year.

Also making headlines:

The Airbus aircraft that was lost over the South Atlantic is of a type not used in South Africa.
A study reveals that South Africa's wind-energy capacity could be 300 MW by 2012.
Analysts believe that Jacob Zuma's maiden state of the nation speech will make modest promises as South Africa navigates the recession.
And, the newly formed Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa launches a new intercity commuter express train service, connecting Pretoria and Johannesburg.

That's a round up of news making headlines today. For more on these and other stories please visit engineeringnews.co.za.