Sasol is throwing everything it has at restoring performance at its Secunda plant — the crown jewel in its range — with the group setting an output target of more than 7.4-million tonnes by the 2028 financial year. However, poor coal quality has led to damaged equipment leading to longer downtimes, and the company will have to continue at pace should it want to meet its targets.
The poor coal quality has over the past few years also resulted in fewer gasifiers available for production, curtailing output at the plant central to the group’s profitability.
The company, in its strategic reset, said coal quality would be restored through technical interventions that include destoning to remove sinks, real-time quality monitoring and coal blending management.
The destoning project is expected to be completed before year-end.
The giant Secunda plant, which makes fuel from coal, is Sasol’s biggest moneymaker and biggest environmental headache, accounting for nearly 84% of its scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions.
The plan to ramp up volumes at Secunda will also see Sasol consume nearly 40-million tonnes of coal.
However, one of the mines that supplies Secunda with the required coal, Isibonelo, is reaching the end of its life.
Hermann Wenhold, head of mining at Sasol, said measures had been instituted to ensure uninterrupted coal supply to the Secunda plant.
“For the 2026 financial year, we will still get 2-million tonnes from Isibonelo. For the latter part of the financial year, the gap caused by Isibonelo will be replaced by the coal from Thubelisha mine that flows via the destoning plant into Secunda operations,” he said at the group’s capital markets day on Tuesday.
“That will still leave us with a gap of about 2-million to 3-million tonnes in full-year 2029 that we will have to purchase and will bring in that coal via road. We already have contracts in place for that coal,” he said.
The loss of supply from Isibonelo would be particularly felt in the 2027 financial year, Wenhold said.
“When we get to full-year 27 onwards to full-year 31, the gap will increase to about 4-million to 6-million tonnes. The reason for this is that Isibonelo will fall away completely in full-year 27. The other reason is that the Secunda operations demand will increase to meet the throughput of more than 7.4-million tonnes,” Wenhold said.
To mitigate this and to close the gap on purchasing coal from external sources, the group plans to sink a shaft at its Syferfontein coal mine. It aims to have the shaft operational by early 2029.
Wenhold said the shaft would not only be a replacement of capacity but create additional capacity.
Sasol said Secunda needed 36-million to 38-million tonnes of coal to produce at least 7.4-million tonnes of product.
Despite the bullish outlook on Secunda, Sasol said it was not yet in a position to reverse the R35bn charge at the Secunda liquid fuels plant in Mpumalanga.
Construction of the Secunda complex commenced in 1976 and remains a jewel in SA’s industrial crown.
It is the sole manufacturer of most of SA’s petrochemicals and plastic raw materials based on ethylene and propylene, as well as ammonia, for fertiliser and explosives.
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