The South West’s leading food industry construction specialist, ProjectLink, has doubled the processing capacity for Coombe Fisheries with the design and build of a brand new £4 million seafood packing, freezing and temperature-controlled storage facility in Barnstaple, North Devon.
The programme, which commenced in June 2013, was fully managed by ProjectLink and included the design, successful submission of planning application and the construction of the facility. A series of high-end modifications were built in to streamline food handling processes and secure the place of Coombe Fisheries as a premier seafood processer for the UK and globally.
Three blast freezers, which are capable of freezing 90 tonnes of seafood from 5 degrees to -20 degrees in just 20 hours, were installed in the 21,000-square-foot building, as well as a spiral and tunnel freezer, temperature-controlled production area and a holding freezer with the capacity for up to 650 pallets.
Iain Spear, joint managing director of Coombe Fisheries, said: “Our initial brief was to find a way of modifying our existing site and ProjectLink have delivered fresh ideas that have doubled our processing capacity. They have used their knowledge and experience of the food industry to deliver effective solutions that modernise and increase productivity at every stage of seafood processing.”
Darren Williams, managing director at ProjectLink, commented: “Seafood is of paramount importance to the South West economy and Coombe Fisheries is a key business within this industry. We’re proud to have played a part in their on-going success by delivering such a significant project for them, especially as it gave us the opportunity to design and build a facility that’s functional and innovative, as well as aesthetically pleasing.
“ProjectLink has been fully committed to working closely alongside Coombe Fisheries from the initial conversations. Our senior project manager, Tony Portlock, has lived and breathed this programme for two years, to ensure that work remained on schedule and that the client was pleased with the interior designs and final results of the build.”
Coombe Fisheries also commissioned ProjectLink to build first floor welfare areas, offices and boardroom, which all comply with the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) – the most commonly used method for assessing, rating and certifying building sustainability.
In what was a complicated planning process, special consideration had to be given companies nearby. Tony Portlock, senior project manager at ProjectLink, added: “During the design and planning for Coombe Fisheries, we had to be sensitive to the neighbouring businesses to ensure they would not be inconvenienced during the construction process or by the finished building. We implemented construction methods to negate concerns and still complete the project within timescales.”
