As disruptions to the supply chain continue to impact industries worldwide, the Russia-Ukraine war heightened the international supply operations. Projects and construction already burdened with delays, were now facing uncertainty in other business facets such as risk in the transport of goods, and workers facing difficulty of accessible transportation to reach their work sites – which was the case for several companies in Europe, including Sonnedix.
At the start of January 2022, Sonnedix had plans to begin construction of Sonnedix Lavansol M9, a 4.8MWp solar photovoltaic (PV) farm in France, with Solarpro Holding AG as our engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) partner.
Solarpro Holding, a leading provider of various solutions for generation, systems integration, and storage of solar energy, is one of the largest EPC and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) players in the PV industry in Eastern Europe. They assisted us in 2021 with three solar farms in France known as ‘The Simiane’ plants: Lavansol III, IV, and VI. Since the partnership was a success, Sonnedix joined forces for the second consecutive year for its new project.
Lavansol M9 was well underway when a week into signing the contract, the Russia-Ukraine war unsettled the global community and forced companies to rethink their strategy to overcome project disruptions.
“Delays would sometimes take months versus weeks or days,” recalls Lina Pang, PV EPC Project Manager at Solarpro. “We felt it the most when it came to transportation and factory manufacturing, which caused problems on the raw material supply chain, including PV structures and electronic devices.”
While businesses struggled to prevail over these obstacles with the ongoing war, the partnership of Solarpro and Sonnedix thrived with the support of a resolute procurement team of both parties. Their expertise made it possible for all materials to be delivered on time including, PV panels and inverters.
“France is encouraging making use of polluted lands instead of sacrificing forest or agricultural lands for solar projects, which is much more demanding in land-occupation than wind projects,” said Lina.
Lavansol M9 is due to reach commercial operating date by spring 2023. Sonnedix hopes to continue their ongoing partnership with Solarpro beyond next year