Off-site construction on increase
The Portakabin Group is seeing a significant rise in demand for buildings in the manufacturing sector as more organisations look to expand their facilities using off-site construction.
The Group’s latest project constructed using its Yorkon off-site solutions is for Totally Wicked, which is said to be the first purpose-designed fluid production and technical facility for electronic cigarettes to be built in the UK.
The scheme has increased the company’s capacity to over 10 million bottles of premium quality e-liquid every year for the UK, USA and worldwide markets.
The facility was constructed off site to radically shorten the programme time and reduce disruption to the local community and to the company’s existing operations on the Totally Wicked site in Blackburn.
Finished in anthracite grey with striking chilli red stripes to reflect Totally Wicked’s strong corporate image, the scheme accommodates a new production facility on the ground floor, complete with test room, fluid mixing area, bottling plant and a highly insulated cold room. New offices are located on the upper floor.
The use of a Yorkon off-site solution from Portakabin reduced the build time for the facility to just four months to give Totally Wicked the benefit of earlier occupation. This also allowed production capacity to be increased and facilitated the company’s expansion at an earlier stage.
Stuart Mercer, operations director at Totally Wicked, said: “The benefits of off-site construction far exceeded those of site-based construction – we could have much less plant and equipment on site, the programme was much shorter, and disruption was minimised.”
