Vanguard, a company specialising in complex relocations, has transported a 130t transformer in record time over a distance of 2 300 km, on roads with poor infrastructure as well as over a steep mountain pass.

An emergency replacement transformer was required at the Cahora Bassa power station in north-western Mozambique and would usually have taken three months to both plan and deliver.

Vanguard, however, managed to plan and execute the move from Johannesburg to the power station in three weeks.

To move the 130 t transformer,Vanguard configured an 18-axle trailer to a Mercedes-Benz 4150 Actros with a gooseneck, which was ideal for crossing the majority of 27 en-route bridges.

“For bridges not rigid enough to support the transformer’s 130t load, we worked with BKS and WBHO to construct temporary low-lying bypasses from sand and gravel,” says Vanguard’s MD, Bryan Hodgkinson.

The last stretch of the journey took the cargo up the Songa Mountain Pass, which features a 35% gradient in certain places and sharp S-bends.

“The 49m trailer and prime mover combination was too long to get around the bends, so we trans-loaded the transformer at the base of the pass, reconfigured the trailer into a more manoeuvrable seven axles, and hauled the load cautiously up the final climb,” describes Hodgkinson.

A number of contractors were hired by the project’s main consultancy firm, BKS Group Mozambique, to complete the relocation before the start of the rainy season – which would have severely impacted on the construction of the temporary bypasses. Subcontractors included WBHO, which assisted with the civil construction of the bypasses; Calmark Solutions, which handled the border crossings from South Africa to Zimbabwe, and from Zimbabwe into Mozambique; and ALC, which handled the route survey.