Every Friday morning, SAfm’s AMLive’s radio anchor Tsepiso Makwetla speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Makwetla: South Africa is establishing a Green Building Council to fight climate change and global warming. Tell us a bit more about that.

Creamer: South Africa is falling into line with Green Building Councils that are being formed around the world. In fact, there is a World Green Building Council. There are also Green Building Councils in Australia and New Zealand. Now, South Africa will be coming into line. The background of this is a bid by the building sector to save electricity and water and we know that the United Nations put out a report saying that the building sector uses about third of the world’s energy and it needs to take steps towards sustainability. We see now that this South African Green Building Council is coming forward and wanting to have a rating system. At the same time builders are already responding to this. We notice the new AngloGold Ashanti building in Newtown is a green building. We also see that the BP building at the V&A Waterfront is a green building. We find that there are movement-sensitive lights in new buildings which go off automatically when people leave the room and also rain water is being captured on roofs so they can use it to irrigate and for ablution. So, a lot of effort being made. Also, at government level, to retrofit and become a green building subsequently in under way. Government’s got about 100 000 buildings and already 100 have been retrofitted. The idea will be to cut down on energy use, water use and everything else that adds to making sure that we have sustainable development.

Makwetla: A sugar giant has entered into a trail-blazing R285-million land-claim restitution deal with black communities in the Mpumalanga province.

Creamer: This is a very interesting land-claim restitution deal that really caught my eye, because most South African have an impression of land claim restitution working this way: A person makes the claim, normally the black farmer, and then the white entity is forced to sell. That is the normal path, but that need not be. People need to use more imagination to turn restitution into the type of deal that has been done out in Mpumalanga by Tsb Surgar, which is part of Johann Rupert’s Remgro. They put their minds to it and turned it into a fantastic black-empowerment deal. It doesn’t deny the community ownership of the land. The ownership of that land goes to the community but it production is allowed to continue on that land. In other words, the company Tsb can continue producing sugar, but they pay the community for doing that because the community is now the new land owner. So you have a win-win situation. You have a revenue stream coming into the community, good strong flow of millions of rands coming into the community, and you also have the sugar production continuing. At the same time, in the sugar industry generally, a lot of effort is being made to transfer land to the community. So far 16% of freehold land under sugar cane, has been transferred to previously disadvantaged farming communities and the target for 30 % to be transferred by 2014.

Makwetla: Transnet approaching the capital markets of the world to raise R25-billion for its massive capital expenditure programme.

Creamer: Yes, Transnet going out to the capital markets of the world and raise R25-billion by way of a bond bonanza, the magnitude of which Transnet hasn’t seen for long time. Of course, Transnet is able to do this off a very strong balance sheet. So they have got this firm financial platform from which to go out on a capital-raising exercise. On the domestic market, they have appointed Absa Capital and Rand Merchant Bank to implement the domestic programme and they will also be borrowing from global capital markets. This is for the very big expansion programme Transnet is undertaking. More than half of the R78-billion is going into rail. Up to now Transnet has largely been playing catch-up, but, going forward, the State-owned enterprise is entering a phase of getting ahead of the game for the first time in a very longtime, off its very strong balance sheet. Just on the Spoornet side alone, we see a lot of action which we hope will lead to greater rail capacity. Something like 500 locomotives are now on the horizon. It was 400 not that long ago, but its now gone up with an additional number, with more than 200 locos coming into the general freight business. Transnet needs to get that general freight business rising so that we can get more of the freight off the road and back on to the rail. General rail freight has been declining for sometime, but it could now have reached a tipping point and seem set to enter a growth phase. More than 100 locomotives will be for the coal line, which will help coal exports a great deal. More than 32 are for the iron-ore line. So we have got this export capacity building up and also the general freight business starting to lift towards growth.

Makwetla: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he’ll be back with us at the same time next week.