Fire damage at manufacturer of hydraulic cylinders: Ultrasonic cleaning at industrial scale
Case study from the archive
What happened?
A major international manufacturer of hydraulic cylinders experienced a significant fire in the paint finishing section of its UK facility. While the fire itself was contained, it produced extensive smoke contamination throughout the plant.
The smoke was highly corrosive, affecting both sensitive machinery and approximately £1 million worth of semi-finished, business-critical stock items.
Within 48 hours of the incident, early signs of corrosion and rusting had already appeared on exposed metal surfaces.
With a minimum six-week lead time to reorder affected stock, immediate action was essential to avoid production delays and missed delivery commitments.
The response
BELFOR responded rapidly, first by carrying out immediate mitigation on key machinery to prevent further corrosion and allow production to resume. Simultaneously, a test cleaning of the contaminated stock items was conducted using Ultrasonic Cleaning methods, which proved highly successful.
Working closely with the customer, BELFOR designed and implemented a full Quality Control system to ensure all restored items met production standards. A TBR – XXL decontamination unit was urgently transported from Germany and made operational in the UK within 48 hours to support the cleaning process. This meant that the recovery programme could be completed in under 2 weeks.
A comprehensive five-stage ultrasonic cleaning and advanced derusting process was then carried out on all affected stock.
The results
As a result, every item was successfully restored to production quality, allowing manufacturing operations to continue with minimal disruption and all customer orders to be fulfilled on time.
This project proved to be the perfect challenge for an addition to BELFOR International range of specialist Major & Complex Loss equipment. Designed and built by BELFOR the TBR XXL is perfect for handling large amounts of contaminated items.
Designed for power and performance, the system is fully transportable by truck or sea container and features five 1.5 m³ baths, two electric hoists, a 45-minute batch process, and independent power and cooling.
In total BELFOR successfully decontaminated over 50,000 damaged stock items with a direct saving of over £750k in 14 days. The prompt and successful restoration of the items also allowed the customer to fulfil vital customer orders reducing potential costly Business Interruption costs on the claim.
Profile
- International Hydraulic Cylinder manufacturer – Major Fire
- Fire in paint finishing plant of factory – causing extensive smoke damage
- Highly corrosive smoke contamination to machinery and semi finished stock parts
- Business critical stock items of £1m affected – reorder time minimum 6 weeks
- Signs of corrosion and rusting after 48 hrs of incident
- Immediate mitigation carried out on machinery toa llow production to continue
- Initial test cleaning of stock items using Ultrasonic Cleaning successful
- Full Quality Control system designed in conjunction with customer
- TBR XXL Unit transported from Germany to UK and operational within 48hrs
- 5 Stage Ultrasonic Cleaning and complex de-rusting process undertaken of affected stock items
- All stock items successfully restored allowing production to continue and order to be fulfilled
