SOUTH AFRICA – Kibo Energy, the London Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed Africa-focused energy development company, says its 55 percent held subsidiary MAST Energy Developments (MED), has acquired a third standby 4.4-megawatt gas-powered standby generation facility in the UK.
Kibo is developing three similar coal-fuelled power projects: the Mbeya Coal to Power Project in Tanzania; the Mabesekwa Coal Independent Power Project in Botswana; and the Benga Independent Power Project in Mozambique.
The company aims to leverage strategic partnerships, procurement, equipment, human capital, execution capability capacity and project finance by developing the three projects in parallel.
Louis Coetzee, the chief executive of Kibo, said the acquisition of the gas power project would represent the third site in MED’s portfolio of flexible power plants in the UK.
He added that there was significant demand for flexible power projects of this kind and at increasingly attractive economics.
“The acquisition of the Rochdale site is the next step towards the much larger portfolio of 300 MW that MED is aiming to establish in the UK. The MED portfolio currently owned by the company and under active development, comprises 18.4 MW of which 9 MW is already in production, with a pipeline totalling a further 71 MW currently under assessment,” he said.
In May 2021, Kibo Energy announced that it had entered into an agreement with Industrial Green Solutions (IGES) to jointly develop a portfolio of waste to energy projects in South Africa with an initial target of generating more than 50 megawatts of electricity for sale to industrial users.
The deal entails the establishment of Newco, in which Kibo will hold 65 percent for an equity loan contribution of R11.145 million (US$748,579) as project development funding for the initial project, while IGES will hold 35 percent for an equity contribution to the value of a seven–project portfolio and development expenditure to date.
“The acquisition of the Rochdale site is the next step towards the much larger portfolio of 300 MW that MED is aiming to establish in the UK”
Louis Coetzee – CEO, Kibo Energy
Newco will initially develop a phased project involving about eight megawatts (MW) of power for an industrial client, to be followed by six other projects at different sites, to a total generation of up to 50MW.
The project will utilize pyrolysis technologies to convert waste non-recyclable plastics to syngas for the generation of energy.
The technology will be supplied by a local international technology firm in the form of a waste to energy conversion plant.
CEO Louis Coetzee said in a statement that: “For Kibo, today’s agreement is in line with our strategy to integrate sustainable environmentally friendly energy generation into our portfolio, which could shortly include waste to energy projects in the United Kingdom currently the subject of a due diligence investigation.”
He said the 50 MW project pipeline also positioned Kibo in the new and exciting renewable energy industry in South Africa “and places us firmly on a programme to production and revenue in the short to medium term.“
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