Sasol will invest 46 million rand and will own 65 per cent of the Igoda Coal venture, while Eyesizwe will own the rest and provide 25 million rand, Sasol said in a statement.

The balance would be funded by loans, giving Igoda Coal an enterprise value of 1,4 billion rand and making it one of South Africa's biggest black-owned coal export companies.

The new company will mine and process coal for export.

The deal has taken more than two years to hammer out, Sasol said.

Sasol, the world's biggest producer of synthetic fuel from coal, which it mines through its Sasol Mining unit, added that it planned to lift black ownership at its mining unit to 20 per cent by 2009 and to 26 per cent by 2014.

The new coal company will have a minimum export output of 3,6 million tons per annum (Mtpa) and will supply about 4 Mtpa of middlings coal to Sasol Synfuels at Secunda, the world's sole commercial producer of fuel components from coal.

Igoda Coal has sufficient coal reserves to last around 30 years.

South Africa is pushing companies to meet quotas on black investment, staff and procurement to help shift more of the mostly white-controlled economy into the hands of the black majority, 12 years after the end of apartheid.

Sasol said it would announce more black economic empowerment (BEE) deals under which Sasol Mining would create a new black-owned mining firm, and would preferably include a women's investment group.

Sasol, which has been criticised by the government for failing to hire enough black executives, said it would work with Eyesizwe on the new black empowerment ventures.

In September, Sasol took on the black-owned Tshwarisano group as its empowerment partner in Sasol's liquid fuels business, in which the black group now has a 25 per cent stake.

Sasol, however, is yet to unveil a BEE partner at the group level, and has said this is partly due to the various units it runs that are governed under separate BEE requirements.

- Nampa-Reuters

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