Archive for date: March 2nd, 2023

Murray & Roberts (M&R) CEO Henry Laas has described the group’s loss of control over RUC Cementation Mining Contractors as a consequence of its Australian holding company, or MRPL, having been placed into voluntary administration as a particularly “tragic” consequence of recent “devastating” developments. MRPL and its subsidiaries together with Clough, previously M&R’s largest business unit by far, entered voluntary administration on December 5 after Clough experienced serious funding pressures as a result of factors such as Covid disruptions and a surge in working capital requirements at two key projects, Traveler and Waitsia.

The electricity shortages in South Africa, which have resulted in continuous loadshedding, are severely affecting people and businesses and, consequently, the economy and employment, specialists from law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr (CDH) noted during a briefing on March 2. They stressed that any directives issued by ministers during the state of disaster – declared to find solutions to the energy crisis – must be necessary, rational and justified to meet legal requirements.

Calculations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were that, in Africa, some 600-million people and 10-million small businesses lacked a dependable electricity supply. Nor did connection to a national grid guarantee a reliable supply of energy. The World Bank has reported that nearly 80% of the continent’s businesses suffer from power cuts. The continent has a huge need for reliable energy sources. Consequently, Nuclear Business Platform (NBP) MD Zaf Coelho points out, an increasing number of African countries are looking at nuclear power as a source of reliable baseload energy. Hence the second, 2023, iteration of the Africa NBP (AFNBP) conference, which will take place in Kampala, Uganda, from March 14 to March 17. It will be hosted by the Ugandan Ministry of Energy & Mineral Development, and its theme is the “Sustainable Economic Transformation of Africa Through Nuclear Power”.

In his letter to the employees of Eskom of 2023, buried in a time capsule in 1999 near to the ‘rock man’ energy statue at the entrance of Megawatt Park, then CEO Allen Morgan highlighted two challenges facing the utility – challenges that subsequently morphed into serious problems that are now weighing heavily on an organisation that marked its hundredth birthday on March 1 with Stage 4 loadshedding. The letter was unearthed together with the other contents of the time capsule at an event held at Megawatt Park on February 15 and attended by both Morgan and then CEO André de Ruyter.