Chemin has been in a process of increasing its footprint to other Provinces. This has led to 3 more offices opening up this quarter. The Midrand office, which has become the head office of Chemin is also the Flyash implementation office. It opened its doors in March 2014 and is currently occupied by 7 employees. This office is located at The Willows Office Park in Erand Gardens and is funded through Eskom Foundation and DTI’s Incubation Support Programme. The Midrand office also functions as the knowledge centre for the fly-ash project. This project is meant to beneficiate fly-ash and to commercialise fly-ash into value-added products that will add to the economic development of the Mpumalanga Province.
Chemin is currently setting up a pilot site in Majuba Power Station and as soon as this takes off the ground it would be rolled out to all the 15 Eskom Power Stations. The incubation centre is currently occupying temporal offices in Volksrust while the Majuba site is being prepared. The centre was opened in June 2014 with 4 employees. The pilot project in Majuba Power Station has 10 co-operatives that reside in the Pixley ka-Isaka Seme municipal area. The total number of individuals who stand to benefit is 112, which is the total number of members of the 10 co-operatives. As soon as this reaches its peak, it is estimated that it would employ hundreds of people and bring in millions of rands. The commercialised value add products which the fly-ash project will manufacture include bricks, Soil additives used in fertilizer manufacturing, Cellular cementitious compositions of geopolimeric materials, fly-ash for Acid Mine Drainage Treatment, Geopolimers, Coarse ash for asphalt replacement and Zeolites are a few of the projects identified for the Flyash project.
Further to this expansion, there will also be an incubation centre in Mogale City Local Municipality located at Chamdor Training Centre. The centre will be funded by both Seda and the Mogale City local municipality. This centre will start operations at the beginning of July.