Steel producer ArcelorMittal South Africa (AMSA) reports that it is planning an upgrade to its plate mill at Vanderbijlpark in quarter four 2014, which will enable it to produce heavy plates of up to 11 t for South Africa’s emerging wind-tower manufacturing sector.

The JSE-listed group has already developed supply relations with DCD Wind Towers, which recently commissioned a facility in Coega, in the Eastern Cape, to produce 110 towers yearly, as well as Gestamp Renewable Industries, which is in process of developing a 150-tower-a-year facility in Atlantis, in the Western Cape.

The company also supplied 3 000 t of steel for 20 Vestas towers deployed at the Grassridge wind energy facility in Eastern Cape, 2 200 t of which was sourced from its domestic facilities.

Product manager for plate and renewable energy projects Jan Kotzé says the upgrade is planned for the fourth quarter of 2014, with production of the heavier plates to begin in January 2015.

The upgrade, for which no capital investment value has been given, would enable AMSA to increase throughput and reduce the need to import heavy plates. “Steel is used to create more than 80% of the components required to build wind turbines,” Kotzé highlights.

The group has also been in ongoing discussions with several local and international solar photovoltaic (PV) companies, which has resulted in the development of new products and the extension of existing product ranges.

Following the first bid window under the Department of Energy’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, AMSA supplied 40 000 t to 12 projects in the Northern Cape, Free State, Limpopo and Western Cape provinces.

It aims to supply 30 000 t of hot-rolled and galvanised coil products to eight of the nine solar PV projects being developed following the second bid window.

Kotzé says the group also intends increasing its supply to the concentrated solar power (CSP) plants, having already supplied 2 000 t of steel plate for the manufacturing of various storage tanks for the CSP farms currently under construction.