ONE of the biggest loads ever was landed at Aberaeron Harbour this week.

A crane parked in the car park unloaded a 20-tonne piece of manufacturing equipment in the harbour during high tide yesterday.

The equipment will be kept on the harbour until it makes the six-mile journey by road to its new home at the Volac dairy site in Felinfach on 17 July.

The equipment has been manufactured in Germany and has taken two weeks to be transported by sea barge to Wales.

It will make its way from Beach Parade via Wellington Street and on to the A487 then the A482 to the Volac Felinfach factory. The journey will take approximately 35 minutes to complete.

The equipment will allow Volac to install a state of the art drier which will enable the site at Felinfach to continue to produce high quality milk base products for the feed and food markets both in the UK and for export markets.

Ceredigion County Council is working with Volac and other stakeholders to ensure that disruption is kept to a minimum. As Phil Jones, Highways Service Manager from the Council explains: “We have been working closely with stakeholders like Dyfed-Powys Police to minimise traffic delays, as well as Welsh Government by reviewing the whole route to highlight any potential constraints or structural issues.”

The device will be transported by a convoy of four police motorcyclists, one police vehicle, one BT Openreach, one Western Power vehicle and one civilian escort.

Wherever possible the convoy has tried to avoid peak traffic periods and sensitive locations such as school start and finish times in Aberaeron.

Some residents along the route might suffer electricity and phone issues for a short period during the transportation, this is due to the height of the abnormal load requiring some overhead lines to be taken down and then restored along the route.

All of the residents along the route will be contacted prior to the day and will have been notified of any electricity or phone interruptions.