Secunda runs on coal, and the coal turning up there came with too much rock in it. Rock chews through the gasifiers, the units that turn coal into the synthetic gas everything downstream is built from. Sasol's answer was not clever chemistry. It was an expensive sieve: R700 million to repurpose the Twistdraai export coal plant so it screens the stones and other impurities out before the coal ever reaches Secunda.
Cleaner coal, better year
It worked. Secunda Operations, the Mpumalanga complex where coal becomes fuel and chemicals, turned out 7,260 kilotons in the year to 30 June, 8% up on the year before and its highest annual output in five years. That beat Sasol's own guidance of 7.0 to 7.2 million tons. The impurity level in the coal averaged just below the 12% to 14% band Sasol had set for itself. Steadier gas helped too: Mozambican production recovered 11% in the fourth quarter after flooding disrupted condensate logistics earlier in the year, and Secunda drew 14% more internal gas as a result. Natref, the refinery Sasol part-owns and has been running above its own 63.64% shareholding while Prax SA works through business rescue, lifted production 76% to 25.8 million barrels. Fuel sales climbed 13% to 57.5 million barrels, and external fuel purchases fell 51%, because Sasol was simply making more of its own. Across every production and sales metric, the group says it landed within or above market guidance.
One number went the other way
Net working capital, the cash tied up in day-to-day running, is the single metric Sasol flags as higher than planned, inflated by conflict-driven prices and a deliberate fuel stockpile built to cover the Natref shutdown this quarter and keep imports down. ORYX GTL has been dark since early March, when the Middle East conflict shut it, and any restart depends on stable conditions in the region. In Eurasia, Sasol declared force majeure on certain products when feedstock from the same region tightened. Two fatalities earlier in the year sit against safety indicators that otherwise improved. And the market, handed a clean sheet of operating numbers, marked the shares down 1.65% to R185.68 on the morning.
The audited figures, profit included, only arrive on 1 September. Sasol has spent a year proving it can run its plants properly, which is not nothing after the past few. Whether cleaner coal turns into cleaner earnings is the only question left, and nobody gets to answer it for another six weeks.
