Well, it appears that Mallatite will be the column supplier for the
South Coast PFI:
Hill & Smith has won a contract by SEC (Southern Electric Contracting) under the South Coast Street Lighting PFI, in partnership with Caparo Steel.
The five year contract is due to commence in April 2010 and entails the supply of approximately 100,000 lighting columns by Hill & Smith's subsidiary Mallatite and represents a contract value of 10m.
The 225m, 25-year South Coast Street Lighting PFI is the largest street lighting PFI project in the UK and includes lighting services for Hampshire County Council, Southampton City Council and West Sussex County Council.
The work involves replacement and maintenance of streetlights, illuminated signs and bollards.
This success follows on from the award last year of an 8m five year contract for 72,000 lighting columns, under the Surrey Street Lighting PFI Scheme, to Hill & Smith's subsidiary Mallatite.
Several similar major schemes are also being tendered for.Note that the Surrey street lighting PFI is also mentioned. The figure noted in the article for the number of columns supplied to the South Coast PFI is 100k. That figure seems quite small. Now, apparently across the three areas there are a total of around 250k items. This may also include signlights and bollards though.
Here is another
link:
Hampshire CC - all street lighting installed before 1990
West Sussex CC - 80% of 64,000 street lights
Southampton City Council - 27,000 street light units
From this I think we can safely assume that all columns installed before 1990 will be replaced in Hampshire, and that 80% of West Sussex's columns will be replaced. The Southampton figure is peculiar, because that figure of 27k, I think, includes signlights and illuminated bollards, because back in about 2005 there were only about 22k street lights. And I cannot see Southampton replacing their entire lighting stock. I think Southampton will be replacing something like 50% of their columns under the first five years of the PFI. Percentage wise, I think the figure for Hampshire is something like 55-60%. If you add up Southampton and West Sussex's expected replacements, subtracting this number of columns from 100k would suggest that Hampshire would only get something like 37-38k replacement columns, which seems to be a very small figure.
Previously I heard that around 150k out of 250k street lighting items (including bollards and signlights?) would be replaced or upgraded during the first five years of the PFI.