The Heineken group is spending £50m on its Manchester brewery, where it produces Foster’s and Kronenbourg 1664, in a bid to increase production by 2 million hectolitres, equivalent to 350 million pints, from 3.5m hectolitres at present to do this they needed several new vats and processing centre.

This was a live site, producing food stuffs, and due to safety regulations, had stringent access and security checks with all personnel visiting site and required deliveries to book in at least 24hrs before arriving on site. This didn’t cause Flood Precast any time delays in delivering the flooring slabs.

High Quality Exposed Soffit Finish

The finish in the vat hall required an exposed soffit with a fair faced soffit, smooth enough to be painted and easily kept hygienically clean.

The install was 5m off the ground so Flood Precast came up with a system that didn’t require propping but still could be cast in the 16m diameter curved openings required for  the vats to fit through.

Curved Omnia Slab

For the curved sections Omnia slab was used with the rebar mesh cast into the shaped planks. The straight planks in between were made from the Flood Super Wideslab® as these planks can span further than Omnia, are stronger as well as offering a cost saving. From underneath the two products are indistinguishable as they are both made wet cast on the same vibrating beds.

From design to installation took 3 months, however, the installation of Wideslab and Omnia Flooring only took 3 days.

The client was extremely pleased with the end product and Flood Precast are now working on the Bulmer’s cider project in Hereford using the same products. The main contractor Caddick were so impressed, they are now also installing it on the new York University student accommodation.