4 It’s hard to believe we are six months post fire in Richards Bay. I mean, six months is a long time, right? What has happened since then? What have we been able to achieve? When will we see chippers starting up? And trucks queuing again? What are our customers up to? I am sure these are the questions on everyone’s mind – members, employees, and general observers too. Let us first run through the activities related to the rebuild in Richards Bay, then we can talk about our customers and some brief insight into the market. A project as big as the Richards Bay rebuild requires more capacity than what we possess in terms of technical staff, which iswhywe have called in Sivest, who are experts in Project Management and Engineering. With their assistance in putting together technical specifications, managing tenders, and then supervising project works we are starting to make progress on our rebuild. The past few months in Richards Bay have also been dominated by the loss assessors going through every nook and cranny, reviewing video footage and timelines as they work on their insurance reports along with Safire. The rebuild is being carried out in a number of phases and, as you would expect, some of these phases will get higher levels of priority as we push towards getting chipping operations up and running: • Mobile chipping of biomass for April and May vessels – we have brought in a mobile chipper to chip bio-quality gum for these two vessels for Japan that we did not push away. The chipping is right adjacent to the western stockpiles at Richards Bay Wood Chips (RBWC), and as I type this, we have already put close to 15 000 tonnes on the pile. This will continue until end May at least. • BayFibre – the main damage at BayFibre is the electrical infrastructure and the screens and associated conveyors, right up to the main incline conveyor up to the stacker. We have gone out on tender for most of this work already and will appoint contractors soon. The work includes sandblasting and painting the structures, cladding the concrete columns, building a few new conveyors, and installing two new screens. Add to that all the electrics need to run that. We hope to be chipping by mid-August at BayFibre. • RBWC – Western side (temp solution first). The main damage here includes the electrical infrastructure, the screening building, the reclaimers, the overhead conveyor gantries and the chip pile concrete floor and walls. We will concentrate on getting the chipper and screens up and running, and before we try reinstating the overhead conveyors, we will run a temporary chute to drop chips near the Danny Knoesen . . . . from the GENERAL
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