MAG Property has sold the DHL Global Logistics facility at Airport City Manchester to HPPUT, a fund managed by Helix Property Advisors, for £7.68 million. The deal reflects a net initial yield of 4.64% and saw Savills act for the vendor while ADS Real Estate represented the purchaser. The 37,413
Construction is underway for a new £6.5 million education centre in Sydenham, London, which will transform the care of the dying and bereaved. The new building is located at St Christopher’s Hospice and the news was welcomed by a ceremony that coincided with the 100th birthday of Dame Cicely Saunders,
Bolsover, Derbyshire, will see more than 200 new homes being built on the end of Mooracre Lane and Rotherham Road. Keepmoat Homes has started work to deliver 212 properties and a show home is due to open on the site this autumn, ahead of properties becoming available at the end
Automation is nothing new in the manufacturing and distribution industry. After all, robots have been helping out on production lines since the 1970s, from shuttling parts to constructing car chassis. But the latest wave of automation is both more autonomous and more mobile than ever before – and it’s already
There was a time when commercial lighting meant constant maintenance, high costs and enormous inefficiency, and all that without any guarantee that the lights would be very bright. Industrial lighting was a necessity, but good options were thin on the ground. Luckily, those days are over. Today’s commercial LED flood
Misconceptions around advanced technologies often lead to the emergence of urban legends. This is currently the case for the integration of smart electric meters. Here, Jonathan DiGiacomandrea, applications engineering manager at battery specialist Ultralife Corporation, explains some of the truths behind powering the energy saving devices. With a global consciousness
Fair weather conditions are helping the UK construction industry to recover from the disruption of the unsettled winter of 2018, but there is some doubt over how long this uplift will last. Actuated Valve Supplies have produced a round up of the construction industry at present. According to the IHS
MAG Property has sold the DHL Global Logistics facility at Airport City Manchester to HPPUT, a fund managed by Helix Property Advisors, for £7.68 million. The deal reflects a net initial yield of 4.64% and saw Savills act for the vendor while ADS Real Estate represented the purchaser. The 37,413 sq ft (3,476 sq m) distribution warehouse is let to DHL, with a guarantee from Deutsche Post SG, and is held on a lease with 13.5 years unexpired. It produces an annual income of £380,000 and features state of the art technology designed to maximise the efficiency of the delivery firm’s operational processes. Upon completion, the £800 million Airport City Manchester development will comprise five million sq ft (464,500 sq m) of logistics, offices, advanced manufacturing and hotel accommodation. The DHL facility is located at the southern entrance to the flagship Global Logistics site. Jonathan Haigh, director of development management & infrastructure at MAG Property, comment: “We are building very positive momentum at Airport City Manchester. This transaction, divesting of the first completed building at Global Logistics, marks another milestone for the scheme with the depth and calibre of investor demand providing further endorsement.” Peter Mallinder, investment director at Savills, adds: “The high level of interest and sharp yield achieved for this property demonstrates the strength of appetite for well-let, long income product in the North West. We are pleased with the excellent result achieved on behalf of our client.” Source link
Construction is underway for a new £6.5 million education centre in Sydenham, London, which will transform the care of the dying and bereaved. The new building is located at St Christopher’s Hospice and the news was welcomed by a ceremony that coincided with the 100th birthday of Dame Cicely Saunders, who started the end of life care hospice in 1967. “Caring for the people and families of South East London is our primary purpose and passion, which won’t change,” said Heather Richardson, joint chief executive at St Christopher’s Hospice. “However, we don’t have the resources to reach all the people who need our help and so through these amazing new education facilities, we can share our knowledge and experience more widely not only to improve the support available to dying and bereaved people in our local community, but nationally and around the world. We are so proud to be continuing Dame Cicely Saunders’ legacy of care, research and education through the Learning Hub,” she added. The Learning Hub will feature a skills lab, an open community space and a café. At the ceremony, Diane Roberts from Dulwich spoke about her experiences of caring for her mum. “The Learning Hub will have beds and all kinds of practical equipment where you can learn simple things such as how to wash someone. Learning from the expertise of the hospice means people who have become carers like me will feel much more confident and better able to cope, and their loved ones will receive better care,” she said. Established in 1967 by Cicely Saunders, whose work is considered the basis of modern hospice philosophy, St Christopher’s Hospice is a place where all dying people and those close to them have access to the care and support they need. Each person is unique; therefore the care offered at the hospice meets social, emotional and spiritual needs, as well as manages physical symptoms. Every year they provide care and support to over 6,000 people across South East London, both at home and in the hospice.
Bolsover, Derbyshire, will see more than 200 new homes being built on the end of Mooracre Lane and Rotherham Road. Keepmoat Homes has started work to deliver 212 properties and a show home is due to open on the site this autumn, ahead of properties becoming available at the end of the year. “We want to bring a thriving new neighbourhood to Bolsover. The homes at Hedgerows will be detached, semi-detached and terraced and from two to five bedrooms, making them ideal for families and suitable for a range of budgets,” said Shaun Fielding, Regional Managing Director for Keepmoat Homes in Midlands. “The site is on the edge of beautiful countryside and we are making sure the development is in keeping with this by ensuring that the design has included a number of open green spaces,” he added. The Hedgerows development also includes the building of a safer access route to Rotherham Road from Bolsover centre, with a new through road from Mooracre Lane to Rotherham Road and the inclusion of a speed bump as a traffic calming measure at the entrance of the site. “We’re working closely with Bolsover Council so we can ensure the development has a really positive impact on the area, bringing growth but also supporting the existing facilities,” said Shaun. “This includes the provision of almost £520,000 just for education contributions, with a further £130,000 for transport contributions plus £53,000 of funding for Bolsover Academy for additional places.” Headquartered in Doncaster, Keepmoat Homes is a leading house building company in the UK that provides private homes for sale. With an average selling price of £152,000, 72% of the homes Keepmoat sells are to first time buyers, which puts it at the heart of the UK’s need for more quality housing.
Automation is nothing new in the manufacturing and distribution industry. After all, robots have been helping out on production lines since the 1970s, from shuttling parts to constructing car chassis. But the latest wave of automation is both more autonomous and more mobile than ever before – and it’s already at work in a facility near you. Here’s what you need to know about robots and storage, or what’s known as an automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS). An AS/RS is a computer-controlled system that’s designed to locate, place and retrieve loads from racking and other storage. An AS/RS usually operates with complete autonomy, although it will tend to have some human oversight. In large scale operations, the AS/RS will receive its orders automatically in conjunction with an eCommerce system, and will set to work retrieving the items in question. The AS/RS concept has been around in some form since the 1960s. You may recognise the concept from depictions of archives in science fiction: a robot on a shuttle, lift or crane navigates a line of shelves, plucks out an item, and returns it to the operator. Many of today’s systems operate in a similar fashion, though their abilities have increased: modern systems can now pick smaller, more delicate items, and do so with dramatically improved speed. The most common automated storage systems operate by moving autonomous vehicles along guided rollers alongside shelves. When they are in position, a series of lifts carry the vehicle up to the correct pallet, which is then withdrawn from the shelf and ferried back. This is often quicker and always safer than involving employees in the retrieval process, and allows human resources to be distributed elsewhere in the business. An AS/RS using lifts is also known as a Vertical Lift Module (VLM). A VLM allows for storage on more levels than are traditionally available in a pallet racking solution, with the potential for eight or more tiers of as much as 100 ft tall. Such a system can accommodate over 14,000 pallets in just 30,000 square feet of floor space – saving up to 70,000 sq/ft saving on a traditional three-tiered layout. The efficiency savings this provides can then be reinvested in further internal and external expansion for production or distribution purposes. Amazon’s Kiva robots represent the current pinnacle of this technology. These squat, heavy lifting robots are what’s known as Unit Load AS/RS, and are more reminiscent of giant Roombas than your stereotypical robot. They’ve proved so efficient however that Amazon has rolled them out to its global warehouses, and they now help to manage the bulk of its Amazon Pantry stock. The robots are able to navigate down aisles of racking without collisions, and can locate pallets by scanning QR codes, a blocky barcode like image. They can then lift an entire pallet on their ‘back’, and carry it to human workers to open and pack the contents. All of this is carried out autonomously based on order volume for various products, and is only overseen by a human controller. The development of both sensor and wireless technology has dramatically altered the capabilities of an AS/RS. Advanced sensors similar to those used in autonomous cars prevent the robots from colliding with storage units or people, ensuring safe retrieval. The ability to grip and locomote with greater dexterity has also allowed for smaller objects to be transported, and the development of what are known as Mini-Load AS/RS. Wireless technologies such as RFID, Wi-Fi and NFC meanwhile allow the units to communicate information wirelessly, locating objects which have been tagged with visual codes or microchips. They can then tell a centralised system when they have successfully retrieved the item, automating the inventory management process with absolute accuracy. Automated storage and retrieval systems have a number of requirements which may be beyond smaller businesses; these include heavy health & safety oversight, centralised inventory management and eCommerce systems, and significant capital investment. Many businesses may benefit instead from the installation of more efficient, high density pallet racking, or the space saving effects of a mobile shelving solution. For those at the cutting edge, however, AS/RS represents the pinnacle of efficiency savings in storage and distribution, and something to keep a watchful eye on for the future. This post was written by Invicta Pallet Racking. For over 25 years we have been at the forefront of the archive storage industry throughout the UK and Europe, designing and installing some of the largest racking and storage systems currently found on the market.
There was a time when commercial lighting meant constant maintenance, high costs and enormous inefficiency, and all that without any guarantee that the lights would be very bright. Industrial lighting was a necessity, but good options were thin on the ground. Luckily, those days are over. Today’s commercial LED flood lights are cutting edge, offering features previously thought impossible and revolutionising their surroundings. Let’s look at one sports village in Sutton, where tennis and badminton courts were transformed by the adoption of high-quality LED lighting. Better quality light Like most sports, both tennis and badminton need high levels of light in order for players to perform well. There should be minimal glare and shadow, and the court should be as evenly lit as possible. Yet the courts at Sutton Sports Village were dim and in desperate need of an upgrade. Fitted with fluorescent tubes, light level readings were only averaging around 300 lux. The presence of darkness made it hard to spot balls or shuttlecocks until it was too late. The UniBay lighting fixture was designed by UK lighting manufacturers Pulsar in collaboration with England sports bodies and players, and so was a perfect choice for Sutton’s revamp. Whilst most LED lights run using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM), the UniBay130 instead uses continuous, flicker-free light. PWM has a strobing effect on fast-moving objects such as a tennis ball, causing a major distraction for players and coaches, whereas the Unibay solution ensures that Sutton’s players can keep their eyes on the ball at all times. As an additional benefit this lighting emits less heat, ideal for somewhere where people are already working up a sweat. The UniBay is recommended and used by professional tennis players because of the superior quality of light that it produces. Significantly cheaper Sutton was paying a premium for its low-quality, high-heat lights. Running costs for the entire club were £31,449 per year, meaning lighting was eating up valuable resources which could be better spent elsewhere. Replacing the commercial lighting produced mammoth savings. The installation of the UniBay130W fittings cut total costs to £7,727 – a £23,721 annual reduction in expenditure – so the centre was left the ample budget to invest in more exciting areas of the sports centre. More environmentally friendly Before making the switch, the carbon footprint of the Sutton Sports Village was at a high level. Per four courts, the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result of daily running was 141,523 kg a year. A vast emission of greenhouse gas is common in this sector – the UK’s sports sector buildings emit of a total of 10 million tonnes of CO2 every year – and often a major contributor is commercial lighting. By swapping out fluorescent tube lighting for 16 UniBay130W fittings per court, Sutton Sports Village’s emissions and energy use were cut by 75%. The centre has lowered its environmental impact drastically, whilst improving its light quality and thus its appeal to members. A win all round. Worth the switch So often upgrading lighting is put to the bottom of the pile, but as Sutton has shown, it makes a real and instantly-noticeable difference to quality, cost and carbon footprint. For an easy way to transform your workspace, switching to high-quality LED lighting is absolutely worth it.
Misconceptions around advanced technologies often lead to the emergence of urban legends. This is currently the case for the integration of smart electric meters. Here, Jonathan DiGiacomandrea, applications engineering manager at battery specialist Ultralife Corporation, explains some of the truths behind powering the energy saving devices. With a global consciousness to reduce carbon emissions, utility companies across the UK are rolling out smart meters in an attempt to help consumers take greater control over their energy consumption. Smart meters provide near real-time energy usage information, which can be closely monitored so that consumers can conserve energy and reduce costs as a result. This motion is part of the UK Government’s plans to have every eligible home in the UK fitted with a smart meter by 2020. While electricity users will be able to reap the benefits of the modern electrical grid, the introduction of smart meters is expected to save utility companies around £300 million a year, according to research from Which? Of course, it’s not just the UK investing in smart meters. In 2016, 70.8 million smart meters were installed across the US, but the smart electric meter is currently the most mature in China and accounted for 70 per cent of the total smart meter shipments in 2016. With forecasts expecting this figure to increase across the world, many consumers are concerned over the safety, reliability and functionalities of the devices, particularly for domestic use. Fears over the safety of smart meters have emerged because of the devices producing a small amount of radio frequency (RF) energy while in operation. Research from the Federal Communications Commission shows that the level of RF emitted by smart meters is below that of mobile devices and so does not hold a significant threat to human health. Another concern for smart meters is the accuracy of the data recorded. In comparison to traditional analogue meters, which require users to submit the meters readings to the utility company to find out the usage and expenditure, smart electric meters feature their own dedicated and secure communications system. This automatically transmits the information to the utility provider, eliminating the practice of estimated bills. Smart meters are required to meet stringent regulations before going into service. In fact, manufacturers are expected to supply independently certified testing results, demonstrating that the meter can generate accurate readings. Often, the meters are still subjected to further tests prior to installation by utility companies, to mitigate the chances of a meter that clocks the consumption too fast. To transmit information back to the utility provider, smart meters require short bursts of power. This means that the batteries installed in the device must support high continuous discharge, offering high-pulse current for wireless and programmable logic controller (PLC), bidirectional transmissions. In addition to this, manufacturers tend to integrate non-rechargeable batteries into their smart metering applications. This reduces the maintenance required, but means manufacturers require batteries that have a long service life. In comparison to traditional chemistries, Ultralife’s Lithium Manganese Dioxide (Li-MnO2) and Lithium Thionyl Chloride (Li-SOCI2) battery chemistry has proven performance in servicing metering applications for up to ten years. This increases the reliability and convenience of smart meters but as they work as part of the smart grid, the devices also offer greater efficiency and service to consumers. With the ability to electronically report the location of any power outages, utility providers can quickly locate and restore power to the affected area. To help overcome the myths surrounding smart meters, manufacturers need to ensure they are employing the most appropriate power sources for their devices. By considering the characteristics needed for smart meter applications, utility companies can offer consumers a simpler method to managing their utility costs and provide more efficient energy as a result.
Fair weather conditions are helping the UK construction industry to recover from the disruption of the unsettled winter of 2018, but there is some doubt over how long this uplift will last. Actuated Valve Supplies have produced a round up of the construction industry at present. According to the IHS Markit/CIPS UK Construction Purchasing Managers Index in June, total activity in the industry was given a boost by companies catching up on work schedules delayed during the winter. This follows months of severe weather conditions, including the so-called Beast From The East and a less severe, although still disruptive, Easter weekend. With a more settled outlook in May, the seasonally adjusted PMI stood at 52.5, unchanged since the previous month, but a sign of improved trading in the sector. The report, published in early June, stated: “The figure was indicative of a moderate increase in total activity, albeit one that was subdued in the context of historical data. “Some firms suggested that unusually good weather conditions had supported activity and enabled them to continue catching up after prior months’ weather-related disruptions.” Within the three market segments – residential, commercial and civil engineering – there were various reasons to be optimistic, with residential remaining the largest contributor to the sector as a whole. Both civil engineering and commercial projects recorded positive growth for the second month running, with the latter achieving greater expansion than in April. While residential growth was a little slower, this came off the back of a substantial pickup in activity in April, as the snowfall of winter cleared. Several causes for concern are keeping optimism for future months lower than it might otherwise be, including a shortage of skilled staff, high price inflation on purchasing costs, and supply chain issues leading to longer delivery times for parts and materials. The report’s author Sam Teague said: “Activity in May was once again buoyed by some firms still catching up from disruptions caused by the unusually poor weather conditions in March, and a renewed drop in new work hinted that the recovery could prove short-lived.” A score of 50.0 on the UK Construction PMI indicates no change in the size of the sector – so although the score of 52.5 is the same as in April, it still represents modest positive growth. Commercial activity growth hit a three-month high, while residential kept its position as the largest segment for the third month running, despite falling back slightly from April’s 11-month high expansion rate. New order books are down, however, for the fourth time in five months, with future growth optimism standing at a seven-month low in May, and this muddled picture is an indication of the uncertainty surrounding economic and political issues at present. With the summer expected to remain settled for a considerable time to come, conditions are right for good performance in UK construction – if the demand is there. But with May’s growth stemming largely from projects delayed by previous bad weather, UK construction firms will be working hard to capitalise on the new orders that come in and to drive profits while the sun shines.
