Kilfrost - News/Media
COOL UNDER PRESSURE AS TEMPERATURE FALLS
Archived on: Tuesday 15th February 2011
While the temperature has dropped across the Northern Hemisphere, one company has been feeling the heat with a massive surge in emergency orders equivalent to a third of last year's total sales.
Kilfrost experienced the unprecedented demand across a single 10-day period at the end of December, and the company's laboratory and manufacturing lines immediately altered shift patterns to provide 24-hour a day, seven-day-a-week cover to meet customer needs.
"This has been the busiest single trading period in our entire 75 year history" explained Kilfrost's Chief Executive Gary Lydiate. "Demand has been absolutely unprecedented and despite being barely just halfway into the traditional winter season we've seen a phenomenal volume of product already shipped and have produced 20% more material to date than we did in the entire last winter."
The company are global leaders in the de/anti-icing sector and Kilfrost's founder actually invented the first ever de-icing paste back in the 1930s, yet never before have they seen such severe weather hit all of the major airports across Europe and North America at the same time
"To put the requirement for de/anti-icing fluid into context, this December and January we manufactured and shipped double the volume compared to the same period last year, and four times more than 2006's level" Lydiate explained. "Deliveries have quadrupled on average, with Frankfurt alone receiving 325 tonnes in one day versus 75 tonnes during a cold spell last year, and scenes are similar at other major airports like Heathrow and Schipol."
"We're also seeing huge centralised demand from some European countries with Italy, for example, taking last year's entire volume in just 10 days in December" he added. The company's long-standing strong relationships with suppliers have ensured ongoing delivery of raw materials and MPG despite some shortages, and their tried-and-tested logistics plans have successfully coped with the onslaught. "The result of an awful lot of hard work amongst our team in the UK and across Europe and North America which have kept airlines flying, which is a great result" he concluded.
For over 75 years Kilfrost has led the global de-icing/anti-icing sector and is proud to work closely with customers in over 50 countries and five continents. With facilities in the UK, Europe, North America and Japan, Kilfrost is able to deliver its safety critical products to the Commercial Aviation, General Aviation, Rail, Functional Fluids and Ground De-icing sectors. Its world-renowned research and development facility continues to develop groundbreaking new products, and the company is continuing to invest heavily in the innovation of ever-more environmentally-friendly de-icing/anti-icing solutions.
For more information about Kilfrost please visit www.kilfrost.com, email info@kilfrost.com or call +44 (0)1434 321500
-ENDS-
For further editorial information, please contact:
Felicity Owen | Zen Communications |+44 1691 610689 | felicity@zen-communications.co.uk
