December 2022 News Update

We have been working with Coega Biomass Centre (CBC), Pellet Tech Africa and Biologistics Africa in the Eastern Cape Province on a highly innovative project.  Coega Biomass Centre is an old biomass pelleting plant just outside Port Elizabeth that was built in the early 2000’s as part of the Coega Industrial Park.  This plant was some mothballed due to a lack of economically viable feedstock input.  With a new group of investors and a new source of feedstock this plant is going to restart in early 2023.

CBC has contracted Biologistics to source biomass for the plant and to run a Group Scheme for land owners who wish to supply alien invasive generated wood biomass to CBC.

Biologicistics Africa has set up a group of 4 land owners in the initial phase of the project.  They have a group of highly skilled resource managers who will provide the technical advice to land owners regarding the best way to remove the existing alien invasives and how to do the follow up operations in a manner that will ensure these invasive species are removed from their land in the long term.  They will also contract local companies to provide the harvesting required, transport operations and follow up operations.  Biologistics Africa will provide training to these contractors to ensure that they meet international best practice standards for these types of operation.  As the project develop this will ensure a growing employment base of skilled operators and local small and medium size companies.

The long term objective is to ensure that these alien species are removed across a landscape level within the supply catchment for CBC.  This removal of these species will help return the landscape back to more natural ecosystem conditions, providing an enabling environment for the restoration of critical ecosystems, habitat and biodiversity within the province.  This removal of these invasive species will enhance the provinces ability to secure critical water resources in a water scarce area.

Many of the land owners are extremely aware of the critical position the world finds itself in in regards climate change and biodiversity conservation and restoration.  Of the initial four land owners, two have declared their land as part of a conservancy area and manage their land for ecotourism, one is park of a game reserve and wishes to expand his land commitment to the game reserve by adding an area that is currently invaded by alien exotics, while the remaining land owner primarily manages his land from livestock grazing.

Legislation in South. Africa requires land owners to remove specified alien species deemed to be invasive from their land holdings.  The South African government has a number of projects in place including the Working on Water Working for Water (WfW) programme | Department of Environmental Affairs (dffe.gov.za) , Working on Ecosystems Working for Ecosystems | Department of Environmental Affairs (dffe.gov.za), Working for Wetlands Working for Wetlands | Department of Environmental Affairs (dffe.gov.za) and Working for Energy Working for Energy Programme | South African Government (www.gov.za) programmes.  These programmes acknowledge the economic burden of land owners to undertake these programmes to remove alien invasive species and restore biodiversity.  Through providing a commercial product for the woody biomass material that will be removed during these programmes CBC is also making this removal and restoration economically viable for members of the group scheme.

Forestry Solutions Africa has had the please and honour to work with this highly dedicated and passionate people by providing expert technical advice and through the development of management systems to enable consistent application of the groups vision and objectives.

In the previous few weeks CBC and Biologistic Africa, with their resource managers, first harvesting contractor and first 4 land owners have gone through the FSC™ and Sustainable Biomass Program (SBP) verification audits to determine their compliance with these International Standards.  They have now been certified.  Forestry Solutions Africa would like to congratulate all involved on achieving these milestones in their development.