Thermal Transfer completes drug delivery systems facility

Specialist contractor Thermal Transfer (TT), a subsidiary of ETDE, has completed a contract worth £850,000 to provide a state-of-the-art facility for the dedicated manufacture of drug delivery systems at Bespak’s site in Kings Lynn, Norfolk.

TT’s Glossop office had total responsibility for the design and installation of a controlled environment, electrical services and civil works within an existing building on the site. Built to cleanroom standards, Bespak will use the facility for a dedicated elastomer manufacturing unit to produce moulded seals for medical devices. The building was originally constructed in 2001 by TT as part of Bespak’s metered dose inhaler (MDI) expansion programme.

The 500m2 facility has been refurbished and separated into three distinct areas. Approximately half the area at ground level was divided off with a full-height wall to accommodate a number of rubber moulding presses. In the machine section there is a raised deck, designed by TT for the previous project, to accommodate the under-floor services pipework that terminates above ground at individual machine service hubs. Also within this area a false ceiling was installed to house the electrical services, inlet grilles and extract air connections; the ductwork is supported in the void between the ceiling and the building’s pitched roof.

The remaining half of the ground floor is devoted to raw material processing, excluding an extruder and a grinding mill, fed from an intermixing and loading point located directly above on a specially designed mezzanine floor. Extraction hoods and ductwork remove fumes and convey the return air to two air handling units installed outside the plant. Both air handling units, together with air-cooled condensers, supply comfort heating and cooling to all areas.

A separate unitary dust collector and ductwork system extracts the larger particles from the intermixing and loading point.