Powering through Dover

24 December 2020

Media coverage has been full of stories about the backlog of lorry drivers wanting to travel from Dover to France but who are delayed by Covid-19 concerns.

As was recorded earlier on the blog, a new variant of the disease has been discovered which is spreading at an alarming rate throughout the UK, leading to the introduction of tighter preventive measures with effect from Boxing Day. (And yesterday, news came of a second coronavirus mutation, discovered in South Africa and now present in the UK.)

Nevertheless, the experience of Himoinsa Power Solutions Ltd suggests that the current transport difficulties might be less severe on the other side of the border.

“We needed two containerised 825kVA standby rental generators to be shipped from our parent factory in Murcia, Spain, for a data centre installation,” Clive Dix, managing director of the Crewe-based operation, told me.

“Himoinsa’s driver left Murcia on Monday 21 December, travelled through France smoothly to get to the ferry on time the next morning, and he was unloading here at 8am on Wednesday – no problem.”

The generators will be heavily load-tested at the Crewe facility before being delievered to the customer's site in the second week of January.

Let’s hope that the travel disruption eases quickly for everyone and that the tighter coronavirus controls have a positive effect.