IP Products

Food safety case study

by Mark Rowe

A case study of installation of an IP video system for UK food transport and storage company McBurney Refrigeration Limited. The new system was installed at McBurney’s main UK storage depot in Liverpool for security and health and safety as required to gain British Retail Consortium (BRC) food safety standards certification.

The standard, called BRC Global Standard – Storage & Distribution Issue 2, is for safe and hygienic storage and transportation of chilled, frozen and ambient products.

McBurney Refrigeration was keen to gain compliance with this standard before 2014 when some of its larger customers, including ASDA, began requiring it as a condition of doing business. Another gain from the certification is that fewer management hours are now tied up in hosting and providing documentation for customer inspection now that they have been awarded this UK standard for handling and storage of chilled and frozen food goods.

After 2013’s horse meat scandal industry bodies, food processors and retailers alike began demanding tighter food safety standards through the food supply chain. The first McBurney customer to demand BRC standards accreditation after the scandal broke was the Northern Ireland-based lamb and beef producer called Dunbia.

NW Systems’ IP system needed to address a key security and fire threat which jeopardised BRC accreditation. This threat came mainly from visiting foreign drivers not observing the site’s no smoking ban and lighting up outside the doors which offered access to the chillers.

Peter Amos, warehouse manager, McBurney Refrigeration, said: “We had specific concerns about enforcing a site-wide ban on smoking which had proved difficult. We had also experienced some shrinkage of frozen fish stocks in the top floor of the warehouse. Some drivers passing through this site come from as far afield as Spain or Portugal. They drive customers’ trucks full of chilled vegetables up to this site, before delivering the produce onto the retailers’ regional distribution centres.”

The fact that some drivers were smoking close to the doors compromised entrance security because they could hold doors open for unauthorised people, who would not therefore have to punch the code into the door locks to release them. Smoking in these areas breached McBurney’s fire regulations on the site, put there because the walls of the chillers contain highly flammable insulation materials. Once the IP video was installed smoking stopped in these areas and BRC accreditation secured.

All 11 Merit LILIN IP cameras deployed were multi-megapixel devices with built-in infrared LED lighting, configured to provide 10 frames per second, HD resolution images around the clock, all recording on motion.

Three LILIN LD6122EX, 2xLILIN IPD6222ES, one LILIN IPG1022ESX3.5 and five LILIN LR7722ES cameras were deployed. Three Veracity OUTSOURCE PoE midspans, A Veracity OUTREACH Repeater combined with a LILIN 5-port PoE switch and three Levelone 8-port PoE switch were used to provide Power over Ethernet (PoE) to all cameras.

Milestone XProtect Essential video management system was configured on the 8 TB GVD IPX RAID-based server, configured to handle video images from up to 30 cameras, storing images for up to 60 days. Some retailers require video evidence to be kept for this length of time for their own records. Milestone Mobile software was also deployed to provide relevant senior managers with mobile access to live and recorded images on their smart phones to help with security checking and ensure all cameras are always working properly. Designated managers can also view the cameras via Milestone XProtect Smart Client from their PCs.

Wirral-based NW Systems designed the system to use the existing fibre network which serves the warehouse and offices. The cameras themselves were linked to the corporate network via CAT5 Ethernet cabling and three secure video transmission points. Cameras were cited looking at doorways affording secure access to the chillers.

Stephen Serna, IT manager, McBurney Refrigeration said: “We were very happy with the system’s design, product specification and installation by NW Systems. It went in with a minimum of fuss within just one day. It enabled us to secure BRC accreditation within a couple of weeks of it going in and we now have an open architected, Windows-based system which uses all our existing cabling and virtual private networking (VPN) infrastructure. This allows us to expand and upgrade it easily when the opportunity arises to do so.”

And Frank Crouwel, pictured, managing director, NW Systems, added: “It’s great that the new IP video system we put in for McBurney has helped them to achieve BRC accreditation so quickly. We have installed a highly affordable video system which is capable of considerable expansion to provide site-wide security in the future.”

To view a video of this story click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb7zqr7PlOQ

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