“Johannesburg” - ‘Chery’
Pretoria - Ford was forced to suspend production at its Silverton assembly plant east of Pretoria on Tuesday after six power lines collapsed in Pretoria on Monday night, but production has now resumed following quicker-than-expected restoration.
Ford released a statement late on Thursday afternoon, confirming that power had been restored to the area in stages, starting on the evening of April 12, and that production at the Silverton plant had slowly resumed.
“The estimated total loss of production to date is 1440 units. Due to the scale of the Eskom infrastructure concern there remains some risk of interrupted supply - however we continue to liaise with Eskom and local government as they work to balance the system and fully restore the network,” corporate communications manager Duduzile Nxele said.
The prolonged outage was caused by the collapse of six 132 kV power lines on the N4 freeway, and leaving large parts of Pretoria East and North without power.
The incident also led to the closure of the N4 East Freeway between the Solomon Mahlangu and Simon Vermooten off-ramps, the City of Tshwane said.
In order to return as many areas as technically possible, the City implemented load rotation in areas that have power in order to re-channel power to areas that have experienced a prolonged outage.
The new Ford Ranger, which is built at Ford’s Gauteng plant, is one of South Africa’s biggest automotive exports, reaching over 100 global markets.
IOL Motoring