JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The final stage of development for the Coega Green Ammonia Project at Nelson Mandela Bay in the Eastern Cape commenced today with the release of the request for proposals (RfPs) to 15 shortlisted engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) entities from the 48 responses received from the Hive Hydrogen request for information process earlier this year.

Requests have been invited for proposals for a plant with a production capacity of more than one-million tons of green ammonia a year; plants for seawater abstraction, desalination and demineralisation; storage facilities with two 7 km pipelines for 70 000 t of green ammonia piping; a 1 430 MW solar PV cluster of nine solar farms; and 1 879 MW of wind power in two clusters of five wind farms.

These requests for proposals are being invited less than a month after the Africa Green Hydrogen Summit in Cape Town, where ‘lighthouse’ global standard of excellence status was conferred on Hive Hydrogen’s Coega Green Ammonia Project by South Africa’s Electricity and Energy Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa and where the R360-million development funding agreement for Hive Hydrogen to take the project to final investment decision (FID) was announced.

“The release of these substantial RfPs to EPCs entities marks the culmination of four years of intense development work to get us to this major milestone for the project,” Hive Hydrogen chairperson Thulani Gcabashe stated in a media release to Engineering News & Mining Weekly.

“A team of over 120 people including a vast array of engineers, environmental specialists, ESG consultants, legal advisers, financial advisers, project managers, land surveyors, geologists, and many others, have worked tirelessly to make this a reality,” added Gcabashe, a former CEO of Eskom and a former chairperson of Standard Bank.

In the same release, Department of Trade, Industry and Competition acting deputy director-general of investment and spacial industrial development Yunus Hoosen expressed delight to see the extent of the international interest in the project, with EPCs from the Far East, Europe and the UK engaging and working alongside the South African construction industry to make South Africa’s lighthouse green hydrogen project a reality.

COMPETITIVE PRICE POINT

Hive Hydrogen South Africa has been developing the $5.8-billion Coega Green Ammonia Project since 2020 to produce and export green-hydrogen-derived green ammonia to the Far East and Europe from its production facility in the Coega Special Economic Zone. Exportation is due to begin in 2029/2030 “at a price point that leads international green ammonia pricing and that will outcompete blue ammonia pricing too”, the company stated.

Proposals requested centre on the completion of front-end engineering design and construction of the ammonia production plant and renewable energy generation plants.

Last month the project reached its 1 430 MW solar phase, which will supply 40% of the plant's power requirements.

The suite of strategic partners intent on entering the project as equity stakeholders before or at FID stage in the third quarter of next year include international green ammonia offtakers, original-equipment manufacturers, shipping companies, renewable energy plant operators, ammonia production plant operators and storage operators.

Hive Hydrogen, supported by Hive Energy and BuiltAfrica, has been working since September 2019 on establishing a large-scale green hydrogen and green ammonia plant in South Africa, powered by renewable energy.

Headquartered in Hampshire, UK, with offices in 22 countries, Hive Energy also has green hydrogen development projects in Spain, Chile and Turkey. It has developed 3 000 MW of grid-connected solar PV plants on more than 50 solar sites and over 40 industrial, commercial solar rooftop sites.

BuiltAfrica, located in Waterfall Point Office Park in Midrand near Johannesburg, was founded in 2008 by Gcabashe to develop and invest in renewable-energy projects. Gcabashe was CEO of Eskom from 2000 to 2007, and chairperson of Standard Bank from 2015 to 2022, Imperial Holdings from 2008 to 2015, and MTN Zakhele from 2010–2015.

BuiltAfrica, a participant in the South African government's Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP), built and operates two REIPPPP solar generation plants.