Vickers Oils is to formally open a purpose-built facility for the manufacture of Food Grade Lubricants and Greases this month (February).
The new site is 2 miles from its main ‘Airedale Mills’ factory in Hunslet, Leeds. It is not a food manufacturing site, nor a typical lubricants manufacturing plant, but something in-between.
It is also believed to be the only such large-scale facility in the UK. Being self-contained, all raw materials and finished products on site will be Food Grade only, thereby significantly eliminating the risk of any cross-contamination with the type of non-Food Grade chemicals that would typically be present in abundance, were the site multi-purpose.
Whilst personnel will move between the two sites in Leeds, the manufacturing team will have dedicated clothing for the new site as another example of contamination avoidance.
As is often said, “we are what we eat” and consumers are increasingly concerned about the provenance, quality and safety of what goes in the shopping basket. “That is the primary reason for building a dedicated manufacturing site,” says Paul Vann, Managing Director for Vickers Oils.
Beyond the manufacturing equipment and infrastructure, the development includes a quality control laboratory and training suite. With a modular design to easily enable increased scale with business growth, the mains electricity supply from renewable resources will be complemented by a full array of roof-mounted solar panels.