UK lighting and visuals rental company HSL has acquired a new 240,000sqft warehouse and office premises close to its current HQ in Blackburn, Lancashire. This will quadruple the current space and is currently being prepared to be fully operational by summer 2012.
HSL says that its business has expanded significantly over the last four years and the company has completely outgrown the current building in Ribble Business Park and a second adjacent unit that came on stream two years ago.
The new facility also provides room for future expansion into the rest of the space once the initial 165,000 square foot ‘phase one’ development is complete.
Features in the new space will include a large technical department, complete with climate controlled test rooms from +85 to minus 20 degrees – including an anechoic chamber (dead room) – to enable the extreme soak testing of all products in HSL’s extensive hire stock. Clean air facilities with full monitoring are installed throughout all the technical areas.
A complete set of visualisation studios will be available for lighting designers, directors and operators to pre-programme their shows. This will have its own contemporary-styled lounge area and full 24-hour access.
There will also be a comprehensive training area with class- and seminar rooms and demo rooms.
A fully computer controlled access system enables areas throughout the building to be secured and locked down. This is combined with complete CCTV coverage with full HD recording and remote viewing, plus a fully monitored computerised alarm system.
HSL has invested heavily in a new VMWare virtual server system giving HSL full redundancy and backup on all vital servers and data storage. The new unit has multiple server and comms rooms with a full fibre optic backbone, and is connected to one of the fastest fibre broadband lines in Lancashire.
