It's not encouraging but I do not place the same emphasis others are on the furnace issue. Perhaps its because my background is engineering and understand that often things take longer then you would expect due to a conscious decision of management to not fast track the process. Rather place an emphasis on budget.
My take is there could be some truth or a little truth in each of the following:
- Commissioning and warranties. If you know you are not going to be using things to their capacity for some time then you try to delay full commissioning and operation as long as possible to ensure that when the day finally arrives that you want to flick the switch, you are not operating outside of warranty period. Of course the manufacturer/supplier doesn't care if you are using them or not, they want to get the installed, commissioned and warranty period started ASAP. So this could have meant that they were slow in fully appreciating the extent of the issues they were having with the large furnaces as their orders didnt warrant the increase in capacity.
fuelcell, I think you will find that the delay in filling orders is more to do with the HC Stack arrangement and their inability to supply components and sub-assemblies. No doubt the furnace issue on top of floods in Thailand at other component suppliers sites just added fuel to the fire of their problems. If stacks were the cause for the delay you would expect to see a second shift etc as this s under their direct control.
- The furnaces were supplied as per specification so when the quality of the stacks were not to their liking they were faced with more capital expenditure. If the furnace didn't perform as per the design intent I think the problem would have been fixed a long time ago as the cost of rectification work would have largely been by the supplier.
As it seems it was a specification and loading problem then the re-design and costs fell on CFU shoulders. So with the small furnaces doing the job they are probably trying to find a window in cash flow and rising sales that the business case for the capital expenditure makes sense.
Or I could be miles wrong...but I am pretty sure there is some truth in the above considerations as to why the issue has not been resolved before now
CFU Price at posting:
5.9¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
