Work to start on £3.5m facility for medical imaging company

The construction of a £3.5m cyclotron facility for Alliance Medical in South Yorkshire is soon to get underway.

North Midland Construction (NM Group) has been appointed to build the new site in Dinnington for Alliance Medical, the medical imaging company which provides  MRI, CT, PET/CT, X-ray, DEXA and ultrasound services across the country, which can be used to diagnose and monitor cancer cases.

Howard Marsh, Alliance Medical’s managing director – radiopharmacy, said: “We are delighted to be working with North Midland Construction in re-commissioning and expanding our Dinnington facility, bringing the total number of cyclotrons in our network to six.  The addition of a new higher energy cyclotron has capability to produce both PET/CT and SPECT products, which, along with the significant additional PET production capacity, will give surety of supply to our patients and customers in sourcing radioactive tracers from Alliance Medical.”

The project, which is due to take 40 weeks to complete, will begin with the construction of a steel frame extension to an existing facility to create an appropriate space for the new cyclotron with a new larger bunker required to house it.  This is partly underground with walls 2.5 metres thick, due to the radiation generated when the equipment is in use.

Nick Banks, operations director of North Midland Construction, said: “We are delighted to be handling this project for Alliance Medical.  It is the first time that we have worked with this client.  Whilst we will be handling the construction of the new facility ourselves, due to the complexity and nature of this piece of equipment, we will also be working with a number of specialist companies to install the cyclotron, manufacturing and processing equipment.

“The new cyclotron facility will be an extremely valuable addition to Alliance Medical and the combination of additional capacity and new products will be warmly received by hospitals across the UK.”