Outage Impacting Production At Ford Silverton Assembly Plant

With the launch of the all-new, next-generation Ford Ranger, the Ford Silverton Assembly plant in South Africa has been quite busy churning out as many units of the mid-sizer as possible since production began there late last year. Ford invested $1 billion upgrading and retooling the plant in anticipation of this moment, installing high-tech equipment and recently ramping up production to meet high demand for the new Ranger. Now, however, the automaker is facing a different kind of problem that is impacting production at the Ford Silverton Assembly plant in a big way – a power outage, according to News 24.

This past Sunday, a total of seven pylons holding power lines on the N4 in Pretoria collapsed, which resulted in a massive power outage affecting a number of businesses and residences in the surrounding area. It’s unclear if this was done by a person or something else at the moment, though police are investigating the matter. Problem is, this ongoing outage has completely shut down production at the Silverton plant, while also affecting the Blue Oval’s suppliers in that area, too.

“As a result of the incident, all three (daily) shifts at the Silverton Plant are currently suspended, resulting in a loss of approximately 720 Ranger units per day, as per the plant’s daily installed capacity,” said Ford spokesperson Minesh Bhagaloo. “The company has an employee base of approximately 5,500 employees, and approximately 60,000 jobs across Ford’s local supplier network, all of whom are affected by this outage.”

Crews are reportedly working around the clock to fix this issue and restore power to Pretoria, though it’s unclear when, exactly, that might happen. Neale Hill, president of Ford Motor Company Africa, noted that it will be difficult to make up for this lost production, however.

We’ll have more on this outage soon, so subscribe to Ford Authority for the latest Ford Ranger news, and for continuous Ford news coverage.