Repeated power cuts after heavy rain leaves work at Newcastle business halted for hours

Nicole Goodwin
·4-min read
Iain Bates of Statex Press in Newcastle, who are having electricity outage problems, which has caused a huge loss in revenue
Iain Bates of Statex Press in Newcastle, who are having electricity outage problems, which has caused a huge loss in revenue -Credit:Iain Buist/Newcastle Chronicle


Regular power cuts have been making it almost impossible for a North East business to operate, according to the company's director.

Ian Bates, of Statex Press (Northern) Ltd, said the work at his printing company is often halted due to reoccurring power outages, leading to production being postponed, which comes at a cost for the business. The issue, which Ian claims to be due to a faulty underground cable becoming wet during heavy rainfall, has previously caused three power cuts in one day, as well as an outage on four consecutive days in December 2023.

Each time the company, based at Kingston Park, experiences a blackout it takes around four hours to get business back up and running as all machines must be restarted and the ink must be replaced.

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"You can't run a business like that", said Ian, who has recorded 11 power outages at the business since December 2023. He added: "We can't plan major production when it rains in case there's a power outage."

Ian said the company was experiencing power cuts before he became a director in December 2022. However, he claims that the issue is becoming worse. He added that Northern Powergrid replaces a substation fuse each time the power goes down, but it does not provide a long-term solution to the problem.

In a letter seen by ChronicleLive, Northern Powergrid informed Ian that power had been restored to Statex Press by replacing a substation fuse on four occasions between December 5, 2023, and January 30, 2024.

The letter added: "When the substation fuse operates, this is usually an indication that there is a problem affecting one of our cables (often caused by a small hole which when wet, can become faulty). As water and electricity don't mix, the cable becomes hot which allows it to dry and almost repair itself. Our engineers are then able to replace the substation fuse and restore the power."

The letter added that fault finding equipment has been installed at the local substation, which will help narrow down the fault. However, as equipment spans for miles and is deep underground it can take some time to locate and resolve.

Ian said: "What they don't seem to grasp is we're a production facility that needs constant power. Every time we have these power outages - even if it's just for five minutes - it takes about four hours to get back up and running.

"The servers have to reset, the communications have to reset, the internal communications that the studio and the high tech stuff needs to talk to the machinery that needs to reset. Then the guys have to strip the machines down and take out all of the ink, re-clean the machines and put fresh ink in - not to mention all the lost production we have and the hours. Every time there's a little glitch in power, it's costing us four hours of lost production.

"We did a brief calculation during the last power outage on Friday, April 5. We lost power at about 2.30pm and got it back on at about 5.20pm. We had 30 personnel who were not doing anything for three hours, even at minimum wage you're talking about at least £1,000, then there's lost materials, revenue, and production.

"Then we have to get our IT systems and our communication systems back online and that might involve having to get an engineer out to reset it which could cost us £1,200."

He added: "We had power outages on the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th of December, so four production days running. We actually lost a full week of production. You can't run a business like that.

"We have the Duke of Northumberland as a customer, Durham University and Newcastle University, Sunderland University and exam papers that get done under security conditions. When we have these companies that have these deadlines, we can't afford to be having these outages."

A spokesperson for Northern Powergrid said: "The recent power cuts affecting Statex Press (Northern) and the surrounding local area have been caused by a blown fuse at the local substation, the most recent being on 5 April 2024. On each occasion our engineers attended site as swiftly as possible and replaced the fuse to restore power supplies.

"We appreciate the inconvenience power cuts can cause and we’d like to thank our customers for their patience while we work to resolve the issues impacting their power supply. We’re working to resolve the ongoing issue as quickly and safely as possible.

"Our teams are scheduled to carry our further investigation work later this week and will be using state of the art fault finding equipment, although due to the complexity, it may take some time to identify the necessary fix. We’ve already been in direct contact with Statex Press (Northern) and will continue to keep them informed as we work to resolve the underlying fault."

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