New Forest Ice Cream, one of the UK’s fastest expanding ice cream brands, is celebrating production starting in its brand new purpose built Lymington headquarters that was designed in close conjunction with Christchurch-based REIDsteel.
A family firm launched 30 years ago that now supplies over 2,500 outlets across the UK, New Forest Ice Cream was approached by REIDsteel when it outgrew its old premises and was struggling to find a suitable new building in the New Forest area.
The new 2,000m² premises provide state of the art ice cream production facilities plus bright and modern office space. A dominating feature of the new building is the giant freezer which occupies around one third of the internal footprint of the new building.
REIDsteel worked closely with the family throughout the design and build process, to deliver a tailor-made structure that provides the company with the perfect facilities for their expanding business.
The structure’s clad envelope consists of three different types of steel based cladding systems.
The roof is clad in a Kingspan insulated composite panel system, which is ideal for this type of building as it can be installed quickly and efficiently.
Because of this REIDsteel’s team of erectors were able to install a 1m wide by 14.5m long panel every four minutes, enabling work to commence on the floor slab when the roof was complete in super-fast time.
Similar to the roof cladding system, part of the wall area is clad in a Kingspan insulated composite architectural wall panel system, which incorporates REIDsteel’s aluminium framed windows and curtain walling system.
The remaining area of wall is clad in a site assembled, insulated twin skin wall cladding system and also incorporates windows, personnel and vehicle doors.
REIDsteel’s Project Engineer for the development, David Cooper says:
By working direct with us on this project New Forest Ice Cream was able to use the expertise of our designers to optimise their production facility. The purpose built structure is tailored exactly to their needs and will allow them to continue expanding production of their wonderful ice cream for many years to come.
Graham Jenman, Director, New Forest Ice Cream comments:
On behalf of New Forest Ice Cream I would like to thank Reid Steel for the quality of the finished building and professional manner they went about the process, from the initial design to the handover of the keys.
They clearly explained what they would do and what was required by the ground workers. All work was done to schedule with no fuss. You could not ask to work with a more professional team.