‘A multi-million-pound installation project carried out in an operational manufacturing environment’
In April 2023 RFE were awarded the contract to complete seven sprinkler installations at Mondelez manufacturing factory in the Midlands. Mondelez is an international confectionary business which owns well-known brands such as Cadburys, Cote D’or, Oreo & Ritz.
This retrofit project included seven separate sprinkler installations, all carried out to NFPA standards 13, 20 & 22, using FM approved or UL listed equipment.
Work took place in the production and storage areas, including in-rack storage, bean deck and bean cleaning conveyors. Also covered was the finished goods warehouse – including various unheated areas, which required frost protection (dual trace heat circuits, lagged & finished in poppy red cladding).
All food production areas sprinklers were supplied with a ‘solder link’ operating element (rather than a glass bulb). These sprinklers are well-suited for food processing facilities, where ensuring there is no risk of glass contamination to the food product is key.
To supply all seven installations on site required a dedicated water supply. This involved the building of a new 1-hour fire rated GRP pump room, housing two diesel fire pumps and one jockey maintenance pump, as well as two new FM approved water tanks with a 638m3 combined capacity. As these were entirely new, our work included the excavation and building of the bases, new access road and paths.
All works on this large-scale new installation project were carried out in a fully operational environment with minimal disruption to the client. We were on site for 18 months with a dedicated project manager present throughout ensuring the installation ran smoothly. Our works were successfully completed on time and to budget in December 2024.