As New Zealand’s leading producer of quality frozen convenience foods, Leader Products have been experiencing ever increasing demand from their customers.  This demand has been driven by increased sales of their existing products, as well as the development and introduction of new ones. This has put strains on their current production capacity.  To meet this growth, they 

have been adding new equipment to their plant in Otahuhu in Auckland.
 

Most recently, they installed a new Retort Pressure Cooker.  The unit need a water supply connected to it.  The water supply would be taken from an existing galvanised steel line in the roof cavity above the processing factory.  

Using a pipe system that could be installed without welding and the need for hot work permits was important for Leader, as the walls and roof are made of flammable polystyrene sandwich panels, typical in food processing plants.  Access in the roof cavity was very confined in places, adding further challenges to the installation.  
 

Leader Products selected Kembla’s KemPress stainless steel piping system for the extension.  Being made of 316L stainless steel, it met food their food safety requirements. The weld-free press fit jointing system eliminated both the fire risk around their polystyrene sandwich panels, as well as the time and need to complete the hot work permits.  The range of KemPress Stainless fittings, including the BSP threaded unions, made it simple to connect the Kempress piping system to the existing galvanised steel water line via a ball valve.  The Kempress Stainless system’s compliance with standards AS 5200.053 and AS3688 gave Leader the peace of mind that the system was reliable and robust.
 

Leader Products own engineering team undertook the installation of the KemPress piping system.  The actual pipe installation took less than a day, and it was completed with no leaks.  Leader’s Engineering Manager, Richard Crabb noted that this helped them recover some lost time on the installation due to other issues that can often occur when commissioning new plant equipment, ensuring they met their production start deadline.
 

Leader Products engineering team found the KemPress piping system easy and quick to install, with Richard Crabb commenting that “we will use the product again as we continue to add to our plant capacity”.

As demonstrated at Leader Products, Kembla’s KemPress stainless steel press fit piping system has proved itself numerous times to be a quick and easy system to install, yet still being an extremely robust and reliable system.  Especially for use in food and beverage processing where plant operation time is critical to meet customer demands.