Gulf Construction Online - Apollo crosses major milestone

Safety & Security

The HSBC building, Dubai ... one of Apollo’s landmark projects.

Apollo crosses major milestone

UK-based Apollo Fire Detectors has a long pedigree in developing fire detection products for commercial and industrial applications. Rowland Davies, marketing manager, charts the company’s rise to prominence and its special relationship with the Middle East.

01 August 2005

Apollo Fire Detectors, which is celebrating its silver jubilee year, reached another major milestone early this year with its annual production topping three million fire detectors in March.

The fire detection equipment manufacturer has been trading in the Middle East for more than 20 years and has achieved a year on year growth in the territory. The last 12 months have been no exception, with the company notching up an impressive improvement in its performance over the previous financial year.
Headquartered in the UK, Apollo concentrates solely on the development and manufacture of fire detectors for commercial and industrial applications.
Formed 25 years ago with just 13 employees, within five years, the company had grown from having a single production line to occupy 30,000 sq ft in two adjacent factories. Its first range of analogue addressable fire detectors, Series 90 – launched in 1987 – quickly went on to become a market leader.
At around the same time, the Middle East was fast becoming a first major export territory that Apollo targeted. It has played an integral role in the success of the company ever since.
Today, Apollo is one of the world's leading manufacturers of conventional and intelligent smoke and heat detectors for commercial and industrial applications. It produces some three million detectors a year at its purpose-built headquarters in the South of England, employs around 400 people and exports to more than 98 different countries.

Product choice
Apollo’s customers can choose from six distinct ranges of conventional and intelligent fire detectors. The company has also developed detectors for specific risks, such as a carbon monoxide detector and a flame detector. In addition to its standard product ranges, Apollo offers marine-approved or intrinsically safe versions of its conventional and intelligent fire detectors, ensuring that its products can be specified in the harshest conditions – including chemical processing plants and oil refineries.
The company also produces a number of ancillary products that enable fire detection systems to meet the demands of modern building requirements. These include a range of interfaces with built-in isolators that enable a fire detection system to ‘talk’ to other building services and make their operation dependent on a fire signal. For example, an interface unit can be used to ensure that air-conditioning fans are switched off if an alarm is raised, to prevent the spread of smoke through the building.
Other complementary fire detection products include loop-powered sounders and a beacon for use in areas with high background noise, such as machine rooms and loading bays, or in situations where an audible alarm is undesirable such as operating theatres, television and radio studios and cinemas.

Latest products
Apollo launched its range of conventional fire detectors, Orbis, to the Middle East market at Intersec 2004. The security and safety show held annually in Dubai has become a key date in the diary for Apollo, which promises to arrive at next year’s event with the latest in its fold.
Developed specifically to provide high-quality conventional detection in small to medium size installations, the Orbis range comprises an optical smoke detector, a multi-sensor smoke detector, classes A, B and C static heat detectors, classes A, B and C rate-of-rise heat detectors and an electronics-free standard base. A diode base and a relay base are also included in the range.
Part of Apollo’s approach to developing the Orbis range was to acknowledge that, while most small to medium installations do not need the constant electronic monitoring and analysis of an intelligent fire detection system, they could benefit from a conventional system equipped with appropriate electronic intelligence.
The Orbis range offers a wealth of features designed to save time, enhance reliability and reduce false alarms. These include DustDefy – a system to prevent dust ingress while maintaining airflow; DirtAlert, which warns service engineers via a flashing yellow LED that the detector needs maintenance; and FasTest, a maintenance procedure that takes just four days to test and confirm that smoke and heat detectors are functioning correctly. The range already holds many international accreditations and complements Apollo’s XP95 and Discovery ranges of intelligent fire detectors, which have already proved so popular in the Middle East.

Recent projects
The company’s representative in Dubai, New Age, has recently completed a number of prestigious projects using Apollo devices. Among these is the Serkal Group building one of the modern buildings to join the Dubai skyline. The building is already famous for the intricacy of its architecture: the beautifully crafted facade took six years to complete. Covering 10 storeys in all, the building includes two basement levels, a ground floor reception and seven levels of commercial space. New Age equipped the building with an Apollo-based system centered on a six-loop control panel that governs around 500 XP95 devices. The system also has a repeater panel and interfaces with ancillary equipment.
New Age has also been responsible for upgrading the fire detection system for a seven-storey commercial development on behalf of contractors BK Gulf. The building, which has recently been refurbished, has a five-loop panel controlling around 600 XP95 devices, plus a repeater panel is now the headquarters for HSBC bank in the UAE. New Age replaced the original control panel as part of the refurbishment, reprogramming and reconfiguring the existing Apollo devices. The headquarters of Sharjah Electricity and Water Authority (Sewa), owned by the Government of Sharjah, is also equipped with an Apollo fire detection system.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Bahrain Telecommunications Company’s (Batelco) Salmaniya complex is protected with an Apollo-based fire detection system. Over 1,170 individual Apollo devices have been installed by Khayber Trading Company as part of a general upgrade. The Salmaniya complex comprises two multi-storey buildings – Telephone House and Telegraph House – and a new security control building. As well as being critical to the country's communications network, the banks of electrical equipment housed at the complex present a potential fire hazard.
The company specified a fire system that uses Apollo’s open digital protocol and includes 650 Apollo XP95 detectors, 147 manual call points and 375 interfaces. The latter are used to control sounders and critical plant and equipment, such as the automatic carbon dioxide fire extinguishing system. The Apollo devices are arranged around three main fire alarm control panels and 15 repeater panels strategically situated across the Batelco complex. These panels are networked and linked to a master computer with graphics display that allows swift identification of the location of any alarm.

Success
Apollo has a long-term commitment to the Middle East, evident in the range of products it offers and in the relationships it has established with its distributors. These vary from Telectron in Abu Dhabi (with whom it has been in business for over 20 years) to more recent additions such as Nar Koob Iran Company and Stallion Security in Yemen, both of which have been appointed distributors within the last five years.
Today, Apollo has representatives in every country in the Middle East, except Iraq and it is currently seeking a representative for this territory and is particularly interested in talking to companies already based there, or in Saudi Arabia.