The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter​

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net​

A Bahamian water supplier yesterday said it has spent “tens of thousands of dollars” replacing equipment damaged by frequent power outages, and blasted: “It’s wreaking havoc on us.”

Geoffrey Knowles, operations manager at Aquapure, told Tribune Business: “This is a really busy period for us. Fortunately we have a generator, but every time BPL goes offline it messes with our motors, our sensors, everything.

“We have spent tens of thousands of dollars on motors, sensors and all kinds of electronic equipment because of the power cuts. It’s a total mess. I know they have their problems but they have had a long time to deal with it. The only thing I’m hearing is excuses. It’s doing us really bad. We have to pay our employees overtime. It’s knocked us back quite a bit, but the big problem is the loss of equipment.”​

Other New Providence-based businesses expressed similar sentiments, describing Bahamas Power & Light’s (BPL) ongoing power generation woes as a “major disruptor” and huge “inconvenience” to their operations.​

Elvis Percentie, co-founder and chief executive of Shiver, a Bahamian ice cream and sorbet producer, told Tribune Business: “It’s definitely affected our schedule. We don’t really have any lost product. When the power goes out we don’t open any of our freezers, and that helps to maintain our product, but it’s definitely been disruptive. We are actually working on a back-up generator or a solar option.”​

Basil Smith, the Association of Bahamas Marinas (ABM) executive director, said: “There is a concern about this issue. In one instance some marinas may have to upgrade their generation capacity, which is definitely an expense.

“One or two marinas have seen boats pulling out because they find the situation annoying, and so that’s business lost. You also have to consider how this could impact other potential boaters looking to come here.”​

Karla Wells-Lisgaris, brand manager at Caribeban Bottling Company, the local Coca-Cola producer, added: “As to be expected with the power cuts and surges we have had some mechanical issues. We blew a compressor and we also had some sensors go bad. An even bigger problem is that when our production line is running and there is a power cut the production line stops.”

“It takes around 45 minutes to get the line running again. That’s a major disruption. Once production has started a certain amount of concentrate has been blended and has to be used within a certain timeframe. That can lead to overtime because if we have ‘x’ amount of gallons mixed, and we’re at the beginning of a production run, that entire batch has to be produced.

“That can lead to overtime and ultimately an increase in our overhead. What we have been doing is letting the generator run to the end of the production run ,and if city power is on we will switch back. Thankfully our generators are reliable and we’re probably more fortunate than some other companies. Our generators can cover our capacity but it’s as much an inconvenience for us as it is for a lot of other companies here.”