This article first featured in South East Farmer January 2009

It is no accident that fruit growers across the south east who need new control led atmosphere storage find themselves talking to ICA and Scorpion - unless they decide to talk to Scorpion and ICA. The two companies have become uniquely linked as the result of a relationship that has been built on trust, mutual respect and a desire to give each individual customer the best possible answer to their particular question. The service is second to none and the customers keep on coming. "Investing in a new fruit store is a big step and it's not just as simple as writing out a cheque for an off-the-peg product," explained Scorpion Engineering's Bob Kendall. "We look closely at access, distribution arrangements, space, the layout of other buildings and all the other functional areas that differ from farm to farm and can make life difficult in the real world."

Some of the enquiries come to Bob and others go straight to ICA, but it makes little difference - apart from saving the customer the cost of the second telephone call. "We work together wherever the enquiry comes from because we each depend on the reliability, the quality and the ability to hit deadlines that we know the other party can provide," explained Bob. "Above all I place a huge amount of value in the knowledge and experience that John Wills at ICA has gained over so many years at the cutting edge of this industry." John is now chairman of ICA and is still actively involved in the business alongside his son, managing director Andrew Wills. Andrew's recent decision to take on staff made redundant from Farm Refrigeration has opened up exciting new opportunities for the controlled atmosphere specialists. The relationship that has built up between Scorpion and John and Andrew at ICA has prospered over the past 15 years because it has allowed the two companies to combine decades of experience in the agricultural industry, especially in the fruit-growing sector. By working together they have refined the design of buildings in order to meet the ever-increasing demands of the high technology end of long term top fruit storage so that they can serve the customer better. "The key is, of course, in the detail, and the two auto CAD based design offices of ICA and Scorpion work together constantly to find new ways of refining and improving the design of buildings and controlled atmosphere stores - and that's good news for existing and future customers", said Rob.

Rob particularly enjoys the constant striving for product improvement that the joint working inspires. "Of course Scorpion benefits from the long experience that both John and Andrew have in working with top and soft fruit storage. What John Wills knows about his subject simply cannot be learnt from books - it is first-hand knowledge built up over a lifetime in the industry. In return Scorpion plays its part by making sure that the building itself is carefully and uniquely designed to take advantage of the technology, work for the particular constraints of each site and, above all, make life easier for the customer."

Bob Kendall is proud of the fact that many of Scorpion Engineering's projects have tracked the growth of individual businesses and helped them to grow and develop in the industry. Newmafruit Ltd, owned by Melvyn Newman and operated by him and his dedicated team, is a case in point. Since adding a simple lean-to at the side of an existing packhouse 13 years ago, Scorpion has been asked back on numerous occasions to erect what now amounts to more than 120,000 sq ft of buildings covering, quite literally, all aspects of a modern storage, packing and distribution business. Those buildings have been designed to support a range of activities including:

• The pack house
• A specialist, high-level highly-automated palletised racking store
• Controlled atmosphere stores
• Chilled intake and distribution buildings
• Packaging areas designed to maintain cool chain cleanliness and food safe standards.

"It's been great to have been as involved as we have with Melvyn and his colleagues and to have helped him create a complex that is one of the most up-to-date in the country," said Rob. "This is by any standards a wonderful example of Melvyn's vision, ICA's design expertise and the ability of ICA and Scorpion to work together to produce something that is fit for purpose, meets the highest industry standards and has been built to budget and time schedules."