Published on 16 January 2020

Posted in blogcase study

SpaceVac’s ATEX cleaning system was the perfect solution for the team working onsite at this paper and packaging facility in the UK.

The facility – a large packaging manufacturing facility in Thatcham – was one that provided printing and packaging services for the UK franchises of a large US based Food & Drink vendor.

When working with food packaging, it is very important that the standards of cleanliness and hygiene throughout the supply chain are kept high to ensure that there is no risk of cross contamination occuring and risking infection in the food chain. The takeaway chain that had engaged with this facility, had recently introduced a new set of hygiene standards for their packaging suppliers which had bought new areas of the facility into scope for cleaning.

The issue the team onsite were having the most issues with was an area known as the REEL ROOM.– The height of the ceilings in this area, meant that the upper areas and the built in infrastructure such as beams, pipework and ducting that ran through the space, were extremely difficult to access – indeed even the use of a cherry picker platform at its full extension was not able to reach all of the areas that required cleaning.

In addition – bringing this kind of machinery onto site bought with it a number of problems from an operational point of view for the team – impacting on production and reducing productivity – which meant there was a constant need to complete the work and get the plant back up to speed as soon as possible.

By introducing SpaceVac onsite, the team were able to make an instant impact on the environment onsite. Firstly, our ATEX certified  system allowed the team onsite to clean safely with no risk of the combustible dust igniting or creating an explosive risk. In addition, the first part of the clean – up to 11m high, was able to be cleaned from the ground floor with no requirement for access equipment at all.

These changes meant that the first phase of the clean was able to be completed in just one day. In addition; the upper levels of the building – where the height of the ceilings reached over 20 metres, SpaceVac was able to  drastically reduce the amount of time that cherry pickers were required onsite. The unique safety locking mechanism featured on all of our cleaning systems, allowed the operators to travel up in the hydraulic platform before cleaning horizontally with the system. Not only did this increase the operational range of the cleaner but it also allowed the team to complete all of the high-level cleans including the built in architecture  utilising our diverse range of tools and accessories.

This change saved the company significant amounts of money on expensive platform hire, but also meant the job was completed in correspondence with the new cleanliness directive issued by their  client. These changes were achieved with a drastically reduced impact on operations and as a result of this  implementation and the results since. our cleaning systems have been rolled out across a number of other facilities.

Talk to us about how our ATEX cleaning system could help you today! 

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