Jamaican food factory upgrades its fire sprinklers
“We are a small food company supplying major supermarket chains and they are very big on maintaining continuity of supply,” said Simon Noble, project manager at Cleone Foods.
“We have to keep them happy and cannot afford to have any disruption to our day-to-day operations.”
Cleone Foods was formed in 1988. It has grown considerably since then and now employs 70 staff across two shifts.
‘Dramatically affect our business’
“As part of our continuity strategy, we have reviewed all of our internal and external processes and one of the areas that we identified that could dramatically affect our business is that of a fire at our premises,” said Noble.
“To address this risk and effectively protect our business, thereby safeguarding jobs, we have installed sprinklers throughout.”
A sprinkler system has been installed throughout the 1,000m2 site. In the event of fire, only the sprinklers directly above the fire would be triggered, thus not causing damage to non-affected areas, claimed the Business Sprinkler Alliance (BSA), which represents fire safety professionals.
The alarm and sprinkler system at Cleone is tested weekly, and servicing is completed once a year by a specialist contractor.
Fire protection measures
Further fire protection measures at the site include a full multi-zone fire alarm with remote monitoring. This will automatically call the local fire brigade to attend in the case of an activation.
According to the BSA, automatic sprinkler systems offer business owners reliable technology that can reduce the risk to life and degree of damage caused by a fire.
According to the Home Office figures, there have been 22,800 fires in industrial and commercial premises in the past three years.
Research by the Centre for Economics & Business Research has shown that fires in warehouses alone caused a direct financial loss to business of £230M a year.
