News
Major Manufacturing Plants Affected By Water Shortage
Two big brand manufacturing plants – Cadbury and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) – found themselves facing big problems at work recently after Severn Trent’s water supply was disrupted thanks to burst water pipes following the spate of freezing weather the UK faced a week or so ago.
According to Sky News, people in some parts of the UK were asked to limit their use of water after the big thaw saw pipes bursting and over 20,000 properties in the south-east and London affected.
Suppliers were also affected in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the north-west, the south-west, the Midlands and Yorkshire.
Although the water supply to both plants has now been fully restored, it must have been quite stressful for those in the management team to come to work and find that their supply was dwindling. Cadbury did confirm that it had a limited supply to its Bournville-based manufacturing site but that it had sufficient stock in place to meet demand.
JLR had to stop production at its plant in Solihull and did have plans in place to halt production at its Castle Bromwich site as well.
A spokesman for Severn Trent was quoted by the news source as saying: “In the last 24 hours we have seen an increase in burst pipe alarms of nearly 4,000 per cent caused by the big thaw. We’ve therefore had extra teams out on the ground working round the clock to mend the damaged pipes and this has helped to keep customers on supply.
“We’ve also been ramping up production at our treatment works and using our tankers to support local hospitals. It is our normal procedure to work proactively with a handful of large businesses who use a lot of water to manage their usage when we need to prioritise customer supplies.”
If you’re not happy with your current supplier, as a business you’re now able to pick and choose which one you want. But you might also want to look into an off grid water supply – where you come off the mains water network and make use of underground water sources.
You take your water from aquifers in the same way that water companies do – except you no longer have to pay them for the privilege. This won’t be the perfect solution for everyone but if you’re a company that uses a lot of water it can be really beneficial where your bills are concerned.
If you run a company such as a hospital, caravan park, leisure park, hotel, prison, zoo, university, college, or a manufacturing or production facility and use more than 30,000 cubic metres of water a year you might well want to start looking into going off grid this year.
If you’d like to find out more about an off grid water supply and how you and your business could benefit, get in touch with the team here at H2O Building Services today call 0845 658 1948 or email info@h2obuildingservices.co.uk or get in touch via our contact us page. We’re a water management and consultancy service, specialising in saving businesses money on water bills.