SIRA ensures success in the US for Newson Gale’s new range of hazardous area products

Citation

(2004), "SIRA ensures success in the US for Newson Gale’s new range of hazardous area products", Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Vol. 16 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ssmt.2004.21916cad.004

SIRA ensures success in the US for Newson Gale’s new range of hazardous area products

SIRA ensures success in the US for Newson Gale’s new range of hazardous area products

Keywords: Hazardous environments, Electrostatic discharges

Sira’s Safety Compliance team and Newson Gale Ltd have worked together to successfully bring to market (both in Europe and the US), the new Cenelectrex range. This range of static grounding and bonding equipment is designed to control electrostatic in industrial hazardous atmospheres.

Current statistics show that electrostatic discharge is the cause of around 350 serious fires or incidents each year within industrial installations across Europe. In combating these risks, Newson Gale developed the Cenelectrex range providing effective, low-cost and intrinsically safe solutions to a range of industries where hazardous area exists.

Sira provided technical guidance at the design phase of the products ensuring a smooth route to compliance with the ATEX Directive. This is a directive adopted by the European Union (EU) to facilitate free trade in the EU by aligning the technical and legal requirements in the Member States for products intended for use in potentially explosive atmospheres. Compliance with the Directive became mandatory on the 1 July 2003.

Following ATEX certification for the UK and Europe, Sira worked with Newson Gale to achieve Product certification through FM Approvals, a business unit of FM Global, enabling Newson Gale to take Cenelectrex to the US market. FM Approvals offer world-wide certification services to manufacturers of hazardous area equipment. Products that earn approval are listed in the Approval Guide. Achieving approval to sell in North America can be an arduous task; however Sira’s expertise and years of experience proved invaluable to Newson Gale in shortcutting this process.

Graham Tyers, Managing Director at Newson Gale Ltd explains: “Sira ensured we achieved product certification within excellent time-lines and to budget by taking the information gathered for ATEX and using that towards the FM Approvals certification process. The range has already been highly successful in the US, making it our biggest market for one of the products, the innovative Bond-Rite, which has several UK, and international patents pending”.

The Bond-Rite is a unique, self-testing static grounding clamp. Its revolutionary design provides enhanced safety and security by continually testing the connection of the clamp to the conductive item of plant and providing visual verification of this condition back to the operator.

Newson Gale provides a range of high specification, innovative safety solutions to the plant and process industries providing maximum safety for both the operator and the environment. The company’s equipment finds applications wherever hazardous or aggressive materials are being handled.

Sira is an independent Notified Body accredited by UKAS for its test and certification activities, and is heavily committed to providing expertise in the development, commercialisation and support of instrumentation, certification and measurement solutions. For more information on the services offered by Sira Safety Compliance, please contact Steve Lower, the Safety and Compliance Business Director on 020 8467 2636. For more information visit our Web site: www.sira.co.uk or email: exhazard@siratc.co.uk