The Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber says hundreds of businesses in six industrial areas are counting the cost of lost production time as a result of unplanned power outages.
In a statement on Thursday, Chamber CEO, Denise van Huysteen, said unplanned outages rose to 42 since the beginning of the year, impacting businesses in the City's busiest manufacturing hubs.
These include Struandale, Kariega, Korsten/Neave, Perseverance, North End, and Deal Party, with severe impact.
"On Monday, the power went out in Struandale on the Chatty/Swartkops 132 kV circuit breaker for over 2 hours and affected a number of businesses operating in the area. Another outage was recorded on Tuesday when the same circuit breaker tripped, leaving the area without power for over 1 hour," Van Huysteen noted.
The Chamber said unplanned outages have become a weekly occurrence in the area and companies were forced to continuously adjust their operations in order to meet their targets.
Van Huyssteen said;"unscheduled power outages place companies in the manufacturing sector in a precarious position as their production is affected, forcing them to implement short time and not being able to meet their contractual obligations with their customers."
She attributed many of these recurring incidents to aged electricity infrastructure, the impact of constant load shedding on switchgear and electrical faults, damage to fibre links, and sub-station vandalism and cable theft.
"The situation has further been exacerbated by a lack of resources to undertake regular maintenance and upgrades of municipal substations and equipment," Van Huysteen said, adding that vandalism of municipal electrical infrastructure remains one of the biggest challenges for businesses in the Metro.
