Martin Brower's Emergency Call Out Prompts "Star Quality" Technical Response

GLASGOW, United Kingdom, Aug. 02, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Martin Brower stores and delivers frozen, chilled, and ambient temperature products to restaurants across 19 countries, so when the Hemel Hampstead ammonia plant suffered a serious technical issue, operations could have been drastically hindered at a huge cost to the company. However, thanks to Star's 24 hour call out service, engineers were called out to deal with the issue and fixed the refrigeration plant the same day.

Star's engineers discovered that the plant's liquid valve had failed, which meant that refrigeration flow into the surge drum was reduced. This caused pressure to fail to a level where the plant's temperature exceeded set point levels.

To ensure that this issue wouldn't prevent or delay the company's operations, the team at Star worked over an eight-hour period to manually regulate temperatures in the chill store and freezer, while at the same time a new valve was sourced and re-installed.

Danny Bowlzer, Martin Brower's Site Service Manager said, "We had no way of getting the plant re-started, so it was an emergency call-out. The team from Star sourced the correct valve and fitted it on the same day. The job was completed within eight hours."

Star engineers prevented high temperature levels by setting the economiser level control down from 20% to 10%, the dispatch duty from 2.0C to 0.5C, HT 1 suction control from 7.7C to -5.7C, and HT 2 suction control from -8.0c to -6.0C. These adjustments meant that the customer was able to continue operations on the plant, whilst Star engineers worked on re-installing a new valve as the long term solution. System control levels were re-adjusted back to their original temperatures once the valve was successfully removed and replaced.

Mr Bowlzer said, "The ammonia plant is critical to our operation, because it stores all of the frozen, chilled, and ambient temperature products in our customer's range. We store meat products such as chicken burgers in our freezers and burger fillings, vegetables and milkshakes in our chillers."

The refrigeration plant utilises ammonia which is a natural refrigerant with zero global warning potential, and as such Martin Brower's plant does not fall under the European F-Gas regulation. With the successful recovery of the plant, Star's London team ensured the customer's operations will continue to be safeguarded for the future.

Bowlzer added, "One of our major customers has around 1200 branches in the UK, however each restaurant only has very small freezers and fridges to hold these products, so they order from us on demand. We deliver to their stores two or three times a week to keep their stock up."

"If Star hadn't been able to source a new valve for the plant, we would have had to carry out our crisis plan. This would have involved emptying out all of our freezers and chillers and putting the products into refrigeration lorries. This would have had a major impact on daily operations and costs – and if we couldn't serve the customer daily, it would be disastrous."

Martin Brower's maintenance and service contract with Star means they have 24-hour access to a source of experienced and locally-based engineers within an hour call out of the Hemel Hampstead site.

John Simpson, Star's Regional Manager, said, "Since taking over the customer's contract, call-outs have been dramatically reduced on site, and this has been reflected in their maintenance costs as the amount of inclusive call outs have been reduced along with rebates being given back to the customer for callouts not used, which were included in the maintenance proposal price."

Bowlzer said, "Star Refrigeration's emergency service is great. Their engineers are always easy to reach on the phone and are always conscientious."

"I would like to take this opportunity to thank the team at Star for providing our business with first class service. Their service and commitment in resolving the plant issues exceeded our expectations. Thank you for supporting us during this very difficult time."

Established in Glasgow in 1970, Star Refrigeration is the country's leading independent industrial refrigeration engineering company, with 24-hour service provided from its nine branches throughout the UK.

SOURCE Star Refrigeration