WATCH: Sasol Energy improves its Alrode depot for fuel storage

SASOL Energy executives hosted an exclusive ribbon-cutting ceremony at their new Sasol and BP Southern Africa Alrode depot on July 5.

The attendees unveiled a multi-million rand fuel depot, a result of a construction project, appointed by the Joint Venture Partners to address fuel storage and improve their service delivery.

The intent of the phase-two project was to ensure a minimum storage capacity of nine days’ stock for each product grade and ensure uninterrupted supply during stock refill.

It also aimed to convenience legal maintenance, meet projected market growth over the next 15 years and enable simultaneous loading of all products at all bays.

The project was implemented in two phases, with phase one taking place from 2009 and completed in 2013. Phase two then started in December 2014 and completed in March.

The upgrade project was completed ahead of time, within budget and with no quality defects, prioritising safety.

The new depot is supplied by Transnet Pipelines from Secunda, Natref and Sapref with adequate storage tanks for all fuel product grades. It has sufficient gantry size to load and ideally dispatch fuel delivery vehicles.

Objective of the expansion

The objective of the expansion project was to address the Alrode supply shortfall that was supplemented from Secunda by road, which resulted in additional costs.

This also compromised service levels from Secunda due to increased demand for gantry capacity and long turnaround times.

The project aimed at creating more space, as the depot faced a challenge of having single tanks for two diesel grades.

As a result, a complete outage of diesel supply at the depot would be experienced.

The role played by the expansion in Ekurhuleni

The primary source of supply of Sasol Energy’s labour is Ekurhuleni residents.

They have operators who operate the facility, with each shift having different groups.

As part of the project, they partnered with the City of Ekurhuleni Municipality to empower and create jobs.

Some of the jobs will be created through schedules of maintenance which will have to be conducted every five years, this will allow communities to secure employment.

According to Sasol executive vice-president Maurice Radebe, the depot development project is a success and will assist in maximising sales and creating an efficient supply chain.

“We have seen a positive uptake already from the new depot; it has achieved an increase of 21 percent volume throughout in the first month after beneficial operations of phase two. We are, therefore, very confident in this project bridging the product shortfall which was previously supplemented from our Secunda operations,” he said.

Senior manager of supply chain operations at Sasol Energy Mbongeni Dlamini highlighted that: “From the safety health perspective, we also conduct regular emergency drills to make sure our responses are at the right level when in an unlikely event we have a safety incident on site to respond to incidents.”

Watch video of Sasol executive vice-president Maurice Radebe during a ribbon-cutting ceremony: