Apollo Protects Centea Bank, Belgium

Apollo's intelligent fire detectors have been specified to protect the premises of the Centea Bank in Antwerp, Belgium. The contract to supply the fire system was won by Limotec NV, Apollo's longstanding representative in the country.

The Centea Bank was formed in 1999 through the merger of two finance companies and is part of the KBC Group. Its premises in Antwerp are extensive, occupying six different buildings - one of which is of historical significance. The new fire detection system therefore needed to be flexible enough to offer comprehensive protection in both modern and listed building environments. The client also demanded a fire system to meet Belgian (BOSEC) certification standards.

Jan Herreman, General Manager, Limotec commented: "This was a complex project due to the multiple buildings involved and the fact that we were unable to use hard wiring in one of the premises. Having worked with Apollo for 25 years, we were confident that its fire detection technology would deliver on every level."

Limotec supplied a fire system that included more than 1000 Apollo devices, including over 900 XP95 multisensors and 87 manual call points. For areas where hard wiring was not appropriate due to the historic nature of the building fabric, XPander wireless fire detectors were used.

Each building has its own Limotec MD2400 control panel (master/slave configuration) and any alerts are fed back to the main security centre so that they can be investigated. The final decision to evacuate rests with the security team.

Jan Herreman concludes: "The recent introduction of the wireless range of XPander fire detectors made the Centea Bank project much easier, especially as these devices are fully compatible with Apollo's existing XP95 range. In addition, Apollo makes sure that its fire detectors are certified to all major international standards, so meeting BOSEC requirements was easily achievable."