Case Studies » Mentholatum
The challenge
The Mentholatum Company Ltd. occupy a large purpose-built warehouse facility at Eurocentral , Scotland and this provides internal storage for a wide range of raw materials, packaging components and finished products. The warehouse consists of one expansive compartment with extensive, fixed storage racks suitable for holding palletised materials. In the warehouse the storage of 205 litre drums of flammable materials are commonplace and because of this the insurers had insisted that Mentholatum had a DSEAR assessment completed.
Because the business was just storing rather than processing materials they had felt this was not required but the insurers were adamant it must be completed. Because of these delays completing the assessment had become a priority action and the business needed a quick response.
The solution provided
We were able to rearrange some work in order to give Mentholatum a priority response and agreed to produce an interim report by the end of the following week; this gave the business both direction and helped to keep the insurers satisfied. This was followed up with a full more detailed report and action plan for the business to follow.
While it was found the company has procedures that should significantly reduce the potential for incident, it was still necessary to confirm the classification and extent of any specific hazardous zones, as defined under DSEAR, to support ongoing safety of site operations.
The business provided documentary evidence pertaining to existing material inventory, site operations and maintenance of the warehouse – plus an overview of relevant safety management systems that applied to ongoing activities. This information and what was viewed on the site survey was considered as part of a risk-based approach used in evaluating hazardous substance impact in line with DSEAR principles and industry guidance – while erring on the side of safety in regard to zone classification.
What was found was that although the business had a good level of control in place that it needed to improve the segregation of flammable materials as significant risks can arise where highly flammable substances such as IPA are stored in open racks. A number of improvement actions were suggested to the business.
