Shipment of Electricity Generation Plant from USA to SA.
IST Energy in partnership with General Electric International awarded the Eskom “Kendal Black Start Facility” (KBSF) project to the project team in May 2006.

In addition to the management, planning and coordination of the project, it was required that the project manager spend time at the site in the USA, advising and reaching consensus with the site engineers on the extent that each unit should and could be dismantled. The purpose of the exercise was to achieve the most cost-effective shipment configuration. This was the most challenging part of the project bearing in mind the fact that the cargo consisted of, amongst others, Gas Turbines, Rotors, Exhausts, Inlet Filter Housing, Structural Steel, Walkways, Silencer Panels/Frames and Stackers etc.

While the greater majority of the cargo originated from Long Beach, California, sourcing was also done from other USA States as well as Europe. Critical to the success of the entire project was the movement of the 2 abnormal units. An 85 ton Turbine (dims 11.5 x 3.4 x4.4m) and a 67 ton generator module (dims 8 x 3.4 x 4.4m) Cost became a major factor as  shipping from the West Coast of the USA is extremely expensive and the voyage times in all respects are long. As freight forwarder and logistics service provider, one is expected to find solutions to all these challenges. Instead of shipping all cargo from Long Beach, it was decided to road haul the abnormal pieces 2500km to Atlanta (which was achieved in 4 working days) from where they were shipped to Durban for final delivery to Kendal Power Station.

The result was a 30% reduction in the logistics cost. Due to the time constraints on this project, a large amount of cargo was air-freighted. On completion a total of 200 airfreight consignments had been forwarded, customs cleared and delivered to the Kendal site with 92% completed within the stipulated KPI’s. A total of 5500 tons (mass) had been moved.