Pretoria Portland Cement (PPC) Zimbabwe, has found an investor to build and operate a 32MW solar power plant, to be located at the site of PPC’s clinker factory in the town of Colleen Bawn, Matabeleland South province.
The project will supply half of its 16MW output to the company itself, while the remaining half is to be fed into the national grid.
PPC Head of Operations, Mr Marvellous Sibanda, said: “We ran a tender system and we have selected the prospective provider of the technology.”
“We have signed everything, so now they are at the stage where they are raising the funding to implement the project.”
“At the moment we can’t disclose but it’s a local company based here in Zimbabwe with technical partners in South Africa.”
Project financing is now being arranged, with construction of the PV farm expected to take 18 months.
Optimisation 2020 provides a unique online forum for cement industry professionals to hear first-hand from experts through a series of exclusive presentations from cement producers and industry experts.
World Cement Editor, David Bizley, sat down with Michael Tay, Advanced Analytics Product Manager at Rockwell Automation to discuss his recent article in World Cement.
Entitled ‘Smooth Sailing’, this article explains how machine learning can help save energy, reduce downtime and predict equipment failures, thus enabling the smooth running of cement plant operations.
The group moved into its new premises at the beginning of September. The move to the new building has been accompanied by a new VDZ brand identity which can be seen for example on the company’s website or various print media.
