Kibo Energy, a renewable energy-focused developer, yesterday updated shareholders on its strategy and said it was also working on a bio-coal energy plant with a major client.
The group, dual listed on the AIM market on the London Stock Exchange and the AltX on the JSE, said yesterday progress on its developments has been limited by constraints around funding, and recent advancements as part of its commitment to developing long-term sustainable energy solutions in southern Africa, the UK and Ireland.
Kibo’s strategy to develop sustainable, clean energy solutions was driven by integrating established and cutting-edge technologies in renewable energy generation, waste-to-energy and energy storage.
“The primary focus is to deliver enduring, low- or zero-carbon energy-generation solutions across southern Africa, the UK and Ireland,” it said.
“A number of these clean energy opportunities are in various stages of development and others still in the opportunity screening phase,” the company said yesterday.
In South Africa, according to Kibo’s website, among its projects are plans to build a portfolio of seven waste energy projects via a joint venture in which Kibo holds 65% and the balance of 35% is held by Industrial Green Energy Solutions.
The first of these projects was a 2.7-megawatt plastic-to-syngas power plant, which would be constructed and operated for an industrial business park developer in Gauteng.
Kibo said yesterday that in pursuit of its strategy it had formed relationships with leading industry entities, including sustainable technology original equipment manufacturers, specialising in energy storage, biomass production and pioneers in biofuel technologies.
Operationally, a joint development agreement with a multinational food and beverage producer would be funded equally by Kibo and the client, to build and operate a pilot plant, to produce bio-coal, as a first step towards establishing a full production-scale facility.
The project, subject to a successful pilot plant and financing, would enable the client to transition from the use of fossil coal to bio-coal in its boiler fleet, without any reconfiguration, Kibo said yesterday.
Conditional preliminary approval for development funding had been received, subject to due diligence, from a development banking institution in southern Africa for one of Kibo’s existing waste-to-energy projects.
Last week, Kibo subsidiary Mast Energy Developments (MED), a UK-based multi-asset owner, developer and operator, said in an update on its joint venture agreement (JVA) with Proventure Holdings (UK), that Proventure had still not made the first £1-million (R23.8m) payment to the Project Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), which MED understood was delayed due to a lack of co-ordination and administrative difficulties by Proventure, over the festive period.
Kibo said Proventure’s CEO intended to travel to London to work with MED to expedite the delivery of the overdue payments, as well as to complete the JVA transaction.
MED was also in discussions for an alternative source of short-term funding to ensure any further delays regarding the JVA will not unduly impact MED’s operations.
BUSINESS REPORT