Smoke alarm firm secures £3m to supply devices to UK fire services
COVENTRY-based Sprue Aegis, a leading supplier of home safety products, has secured major funding in order to supply smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) detectors to the UK’s fire and rescue services.
The company has attracted £2.9m of the £3.2m total Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) funding to enable the fire services to install the alarms in privately rented properties across the country during 2015.
The DCLG funding will enable around 445,000 smoke and 52,000 CO alarms to be fitted free by the fire services to private sector landlords whose properties currently do not have alarms. All 46 of the brigades in England are receiving smoke and CO alarms to distribute according to the number of privately rented properties in their area.
New regulations requiring landlords to install smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in their properties have been laid in Parliament and are expected to come into force, subject to Parliamentary approval, in October 2015. The proposed measures will require landlords to ensure at least one working smoke alarm is installed on every floor of their property and test them at the start of every tenancy.
Commenting on the DCLG funding, Graham Whitworth, executive chairman of Sprue, said: “With people at least four times more likely to die in a fire in a home where there is no working smoke alarm, this is another important step towards improving safety in the home and potentially saving lives and we are delighted to have secured £2.9m of the total DCLG funding.
“Furthermore, with a potential £5,000 fine for non-compliance per property, Sprue sees this important program as part of wider government initiatives to improve public safety in the home. Whilst Sprue’s allocation of the DCLG funding will result in additional sales for Sprue, with a finite number of UK F&RS staff to physically fit the alarms, the incremental benefit for Sprue in 2015 is only currently expected to be relatively modest.”
The company as also announced that it has been appointed as the master UK distributor by Innohome Oy, a company based in Finland, to sell Innohome’s Stove Alarm and multi-award winning Stove Guard cooking safety products.
It said the agreement would enable it to leverage Sprue’s established UK customer base.
Stove Guard’s unique algorithm learns users’ cooking patterns and monitors the use of the stove. It can then in the event of abnormal use predict whether a fire is likely to start, and, if so, the product automatically shuts off the power supply to prevent a fire from starting in the first place.
However, while Sprue said it was delighted to sell both the Stove Guard and Stove Alarm alongside its own smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, it did not expect sales of the new products to be significant in 2015.
