Power Game

Generator boxes bridge supply gap

Notoriously tricky to get into, much less steer through recession, plant hire has got to be one of the most difficult industries to sell in, particularly in a market with established players.

During the downturn of the early 1990s, many firms in Europe went to the wall, but according to Milan Balac, MD of new power rental firm RSS, the answer is simple; “They didn’t manage their cashflow”, he said, meaning, those firms weren’t quick to pick up on customers who didn’t pay their bills on time.

While a lot has changed in the market since the firm’s April 2007 inception, there are several aspects that give the company a unique selling point. For a start, the fleet is straight-out-of-the-crate new. “As of January this year, we’ve invested a lot of money in our rental fleet of generators and portable air conditioners, along with all that makes a company work, technicians, front office staff and so on” said UAE general manager Lee Cox.

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BRAND NEW
Brand new equipment gave the company a competitive advantage, and the firm quickly picked up some big contracts, initially concentrating of the cooling side of the business.. “We had some major district cooling projects on the Palm and other places.” Cox said. “It very quickly became apparent that the market for power generation was huge and it was a logical market to get into. We needed [gensets] to run our chillers, along with associated equipment, power generation cables and the like.”

Of course, anybody who has tried to buy a genset recently, particularly the larger types, will tell you that they are not available of the shelf. Lead times of many months are fairly commonplace.

However, RSS had implemented a strategy of only working with one manufacturer for each equipment category. In the case of the generator sets this was Cummins. “We placed substantial orders [with them]” said Cox. “Being from the industry myself, I realise that huge lead times go with the big generators, 500kv and above.

We had good cooperation with Cummins and the long lead times were all part of our business plan - We were absolutely aware of it from day one.”