Star 2022-07-12

ESKOM has advised South Africans to brace for another week of power cuts due to a significant backlog in maintenance of its ageing coal-fired power plants following a 2-week strike by workers over wage increases. The struggling power utility yesterday said it continued to have a shortfall in generation capacity, and thus will imple- ment up to Stage 4 load shedding during the week, and lower it to Stage 2 around the clock at the weekend. South Africa has already experienced 73 days of load shedding since the start of 2022. Eskom chief executive Andre de Ruyter said it will take weeks for the national grid to be restored to function optimally as the system was unreliable and unpredictable at the moment. “This is not the news you want to…

NEW “politically motivated” EU regulations could see R654 million of South African citrus destroyed, the Citrus Growers Association of South Africa (CGA) said yesterday. Deon Joubert, CGA special envoy for Market Access and EU Matters, said last month the EU’s standing committee on plant, animal food and feed published what he called drastic and arguably misinformed new regulations requiring the cold treatment for oranges heading to the EU, as a means to address false codling moth interceptions from Southern African orange exports. Joubert said if enforced this month, these new regulations could result in millions of cartons of citrus headed for the EU being destroyed. “Despite objections from a number of countries, including European markets that import South African oranges, these new regulations were published in the Official Journal…

THE RAND yesterday breached the psychological R17-mark to the US dollar for the first time in 22 months on fears of a global recession as the markets brace for another hawkish US Federal Reserve’s stance on interest rates. The domestic currency had weakened by more than 1 percent to R17.08 by 4pm yesterday after opening trade at the JSE at R16.92 to the greenback at 9am, also pressured by the dollar strength following Friday’s strong US jobs data. This was the weakest the rand has been since September 2020 after demand spiked following the easing of Covid-19 restrictions. Unemployment in the US remained unchanged at 3.6 percent in spite of the world’s largest economy adding another 372 000 jobs in June. This has left a confusing picture…

CAPITAL & Regional’s Walthamstow residential development has been sold to Long Harbour for £21.65 million (R438.12m), so that construction of the development can commence. Capital & Regional, the UK convenience and community-focused shopping centre real estate investment trust (Reit) with a secondary listing on the JSE, yesterday said the sale of the residential development project at its 17&Central community shopping centre in Walthamstow, London, to specialist residential developer Long Harbour, had been concluded. The deal was in line with its strategy to create value from its portfolio through reconfiguring or repurposing underutilised space for other uses, which also help to drive footfall and operational performance. Capital & Regional plans to use most of the proceeds to reduce its loan facility within The Mall Limited Partnership. Its share price rose…

ORION Minerals’s share price surged nearly 5 percent yesterday, after it announced excellent results from the recently completed in-fill drilling at its Prieska copper-zinc project in the Northern Cape. The shares traded at 23 cents intra-day on the JSE after the group said it had received highly encouraging initial assay results from an in-fill drilling programme designed to upgrade the existing shallow inferred resource, in the +105-level crown pillar area at its project. According to the group, 14 in-fill holes were completed for 917.87 metres of drilling, designed to upgrade the existing inferred supergene resource of 630 000 tons at 2.2 percent copper and 1.8 percent zinc to the higher-confidence indicated category, as part of ongoing feasibility studies on the early production strategy. “Final…

THE HUMAN, social and economic impact of the July 2021 unrest have been significant in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). Adding to the complexity has been the April 2022 floods in the province which exacerbated the challenges of repairing infrastructure and getting KZN fully operational. And then there has been the rise of the so-called “construction mafia” that has seen a criminal element holding construction sites to ransom and demanding builders use only their people to cover a portion of the local procurement requirement. It hardly comes as a surprise then that recovery has been slow, with individuals, local companies and multinationals opting not to rebuild their damaged properties in Durban. Furthermore, it has become more expensive over the past 12 months to put up new buildings in the province. This can be…