Pennine's polyaryletherketone roll-out

Pennine Radio has provided a Motorola MOTOTRBO Capacity Plus system at polyaryletherketone products manufacturer Victrex’s main plant in Thornton Cleveleys, in Lancashire. The system is integrated with the vendor’s own IP-based control room solution, TRBOnet.

According to Pennine, the Motorola product was chosen because it is: “a highly scalable, single-site solution which can support over 1,000 users. [It also] offers a range of useful productivity and safety enhancing features.” These include a system-wide calling capability, meaning that all of its 600 staff can be simultaneously alerted in the event of any potential incidents.

The system is made up of 79 Motorola DP4401 EX and DP4801 EX ATEX-certified handheld units, as well as several repeaters.

Speaking of the benefits of the system, Victrex’s Howard Midgley said: “Our manufacturing operations include powder plants, whilst vinyl chloride gas is also used by our immediate neighbours. This means that whilst Victrex is rated on COMAH’s lower tier, the wider site builds up to be higher tier. It’s therefore safety critical that we can contact all the operators on the various plants should there be an incident.”

Polyaryletherketone is a family of semi-crystalline thermoplastic used in a variety of sectors, for instance in the production of oil drilling components such as seals and wire coatings. It can withstand temperature, stress and also possesses resistance to corrosion.