Business leaders gathered in Melbourne today to officially sign the Coldry license agreement that paves the way to a record export deal that heralds a new, environmentally cleaner future for Victoria’s vast brown coal reserves. The deal enables ECT and TinCom, through their joint venture company Victoria Coldry Pty Ltd (VCPL), to export 2 Mt/y of COLDRY pellets from early 2014, expanding up to 20 million tonnes a year in its first decade of operations, helping to underpin the energy security of Vietnam’s rapidly growing economy.
A senior Vietnamese trade delegation, led by Vietnam’s Minister for Planning and Investment H.E Vo Hong Phuc, joined Australia’s Federal Minister for Trade, Hon. Simon Crean, to officially acknowledge the multi-million dollar brown coal deal, between Melbourne technology company Environmental Clean Technologies (ECT) and Vietnam’s TinCom. The agreement signals the first large-scale commercial deployment of ECT’s revolutionary brown coal dewatering technology, known as COLDRY, proposed for development at Gippsland’s Loy Yang Power site. This patented process enables brown coal to be economically dewatered from 60% down to 12% moisture producing an exportable, black coal equivalent pellet.
ECT says its dewatered pellets are more environmentally sound than using raw brown coal and can cut carbon emissions by 30%. ECT Chief Executive Kos Galtos said this license agreement was an “historic step” for ECT, and concluded almost two years of intense negotiations. TinCom chairman, Thang van Luong said this revolutionary technology created an environmentally friendly, sustainable energy supply, which was critical for emerging economies around the globe. “We will build our Victoria Coldry business by supporting the growth of Vietnamese power stations’ consumption of high grade Coldry black coal equivalent pellets, as well as seeking other opportunities to supply the energy needs of China and other emerging nations,” he said.
Galtos said the deal meant hundreds of construction jobs could soon be created in the Latrobe Valley, but said the implications of the deal were more far reaching. “COLDRY technology is a revolutionary way of using what is a worldclass lignite asset,” he said. “Victoria has around 30,000 Mt of economically winnable brown coal which to date has predominantly been used for local power generation.”
Under the terms of the agreement, ECT will draw a royalty of $5 for every tonne, resulting in annual revenues from this project of $10 million in phase one, increasing to $100 million a year after 2020. The COLDRY plant is expected to be fully operational by late 2013 or early 2014.
