This video was filmed at the Tratos cable manufacturer plan in Italy. Peter Waterworth, the Technical and Development Director at Tratos UK, tells us about the rigorous chemical tests in Tratos.
Tratos has chemical laboratories for testing. These chemical test facilities allow Tratos to do, shall we say, the old-fashioned wet chemistry where you go in with reserves of chemicals, test tubes, funnels, and the like. But also, we have the latest electronic analytical test equipment. With this, we don’t have to wait days to get a result. We can test a small sample of the cable, and it quickly analyzes the constituent proportions. We can then determine if we missed anything out or added something that shouldn’t be there. This allows us to chemically analyze whether it’s a raw material, a compound we’ve mixed, or a piece of compound taken off a cable that’s come back from a customer. We can quickly determine its chemical composition and verify if the substance should be there or not.
Even though we buy from approved suppliers, we always conduct checks at regular intervals on all the raw materials that come in and are mixed. The basic test equipment we have assures us that any material we purchase is fit for purpose, meets the specifications we set, and once applied, will meet or even exceed the requirements of our customers.
We guarantee that our customer base includes some of the blue-chip and renowned companies. Companies such as Transport for London and the London Underground are part of our clientele. We supply them with cables that must possess the highest fire resistance properties. And while they trust us, they still insist that our products undergo independent testing by a third-party test house to verify and assure them that when we claim a product meets certain requirements, it genuinely does.
Similarly, many councils and major builders, especially when considering fire-resistant cables or cables for fire alarms and emergency lighting, seek our products. In these instances too, we rely on independent third-party test houses to have our products tested, checked, and certified, ensuring they meet the claims we make for them.
