Bamburi Cement experienced 111 power outages last year, prompting the cement maker to convene a meeting with Kenya Power over the costly inconveniences mainly linked to load shedding in Mombasa.
Chief executive Mohit Kapoor said the blackouts disrupted operations and resulted in increased energy costs due to additional hours required to restart the factory machines.
“Our operations shut down 111 times during the year because of load shedding and power disruption. We are significantly impacted because of the quality and cost of power,” said Mr Kapoor.
“I met the Kenya Power team and it assured me it was going to work on it because Bamburi is among the top 10 power consumers in this country. January and February this year were relatively good but again it started deteriorating in March,” said Mr Kapoor. Load shedding is the deliberate shutdown of electric power in a part or parts of a distribution system, generally to prevent failure of the entire system when demand strains the capacity of the system.
The power outages hit the Bamburi plants in Nairobi and Mombasa, prompting the cement maker’s management to meet the Kenya power team over the issue that in November last year alone cost the company about Sh400 million.
Power outages for manufacturing plants such as ones operated by Bamburi are costly. The two Bamburi plants for instance require five to six hours of heating to achieve the desired temperatures for production.
“If power goes off for about four to five hours, for you to warm that kiln again, you will require about six to eight hours without even feeding in anything. You are just losing power to bring the equipment to the right temperature,” said Eugene Antera, chief finance officer at Bamburi.
The power blackouts are, however, forcing Bamburi into disruptions that cost it additional electricity purchases to heat the kiln. The firm also loses money on maintenance and replacing parts of equipment spoiled due to erratic electricity.
Mr Kapoor said when kilns and motor drivers are working and load shedding or power fluctuation happens, it creates thermal and electric shock on the equipment. The November disruption for instance caused refractories to fall into the kiln, forcing Bamburi to replace the entire refractory lining.
The cement maker is setting up a 14.5 megawatts solar plant in Mombasa and a five megawatts plant at the Nairobi factory through which it hopes to save about Sh400 million of its annual spending on power needs.
