Trigon Snacks

Trigon Snacks in Aintree, Liverpool, is one of the UK’s leading snack manufacturers, home to popular snacking brands Big D and Bar Bites. The company also supplies private and own-label products to many of the major supermarkets.

At Trigon’s production facilities, nuts are cooked in a shallow bath of oil on a long conveyor fryer. This industrial fryer was protected by a CO2 gas system (installed by others), which traditionally has been the design of choice for such applications. However, after an insurance assessment of plant and machinery at the facility, Gas fire suppression was deemed insufficient for the risk with Watermist preferred for the following reasons:

• Watermist has a cooling and an inerting effect rather than being reliant on the reduction of oxygen alone.
• Watermist can have a continuous run time in excess of 10-20 minutes vs Gas which is a one-shot deal lasting only 30-40 seconds. There is a real risk of re-ignition with a bath of hot oil on a moving conveyor.
• Watermist creates steam when in contact with the hot materials, absorbing heat and reducing burning material to below their ignition point.
• Watermist provides wetting to the hot surfaces and settles on the hot materials eventually, whereas gas tends to leak away from the sources of ignition and escape.

After a careful assessment of the risk and by agreement with the customer and insurers, Nobel designed and installed High Pressure Watermist systems to protect each of the five fryers, fed by a dedicated central pump and water tank.

From a Nobel perspective, we have noticed a trend that insurers increasingly seem to be moving away from gas fire suppression systems to preferring Watermist in Food Production, for both industrial ovens and industrial fryers.