By Patrick Cull Political Editor
THE Eastern Cape government has unveiled a R1-billion investment in a bio-fuels project in the Transkei that could result in 70 hectares of canola being planted and thousands of jobs being created.
Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela said in her state of the province address on Friday that the province had been selected as the national pilot and the project had the potential to create 21 600 direct and indirect job opportunities.
Speaking at a media conference earlier, Agriculture MEC Gugile Nkwinti said that the R1-billion investment included a plant in the East London industrial development zone that would be erected by a German investor with whom negotiations were now under way.
He said the German investor was “ready to build the plant” and the matter would be taken further at a meeting on February 26.
Nkwinti said that in the first phase, 20 000 hectares of canola would be planted.
He said there had unfortunately been a delay in ordering seed from Australia because a national framework for the bio-fuels industry had not been in place.
This would now take place next year, he said, adding that he wanted an Eastern Cape strategy developed “so that we do not delay”.
Nkwinti stressed that planting would take place on communal land and the aim was to establish joint ventures that would benefit some of the villages. With regard to the sugar beet project, Nkwinti said the initial plan had been to grow sugar beet for export, but a feasibility study was now looking at the possibility of converting sugar beet to ethanol.
This was a joint venture with the Industrial Development Corporation, Sugarbeet SA and the national government following the decision to declare bio-fuels a strategic industry.
He said this decision had been taken in October last year and a decision on whether to proceed with the project would be taken next month. The main plant would be in Cradock as had been initially envisaged, with smaller plants in other parts of the province.
Speaking at the briefing, Economic Affairs, Environment and Tourism MEC Mbulelo Sogoni acknowledged that progress with the R28-billion Umzimvubu catchment project had not been as fast as he would have liked.
However, he said, research had been conducted into the viability of the project and the province had “come up with a concept and sold it to the national government and it has been accepted”.
Songoni said that the next step had been to create a special-purpose vehicle for the two projects that fell under the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative and this had now been registered and a chief executive officer would be appointed to drive the project.
The timber cluster based on the north-east Cape forests is the other Asgisa project.