Condimaniac CPU, Chatham
Full fit-out of a dual-zone central production unit for a fast-growing Kent condiment brand, delivered as main and sole contractor in five weeks.Two production rooms, one unit, no cross-contact
Condimaniac is a fast-growing Kent condiment brand, and Chatham is where its production moved. The brief was a full fit-out of a dual-zone central production unit: a wet sauce room and a dry spice room, with allergen-safe separation between them, plus extraction, cladding, electrical and plumbing. We were main and sole contractor, so the whole thing was ours.
Central production units are their own discipline. As a category they are high-volume, HACCP-critical environments serving multiple outlets, and the design questions across the sector are bulk production workflows, blast chilling, regeneration and distribution logistics rather than covers per service. Whatever the mix on a given site, a CPU is built around what leaves the building, not around a dining room.
Two rooms with opposite requirements, sharing one building
The hard part of this job was the ventilation, and the reason is the pairing of rooms. Wet sauce production puts heat and moisture into the air. Dry spice handling puts fine airborne particulate into it. Neither can be allowed to reach the other, because cross-contact between a spice room and a sauce room is an allergen control failure rather than a housekeeping problem, and in a HACCP environment that is the whole point of the layout.
Ordinary commercial kitchen extraction pulls hard, and pulling hard is exactly wrong in a dry spice room. High air velocity lifts powder off benches and out of open containers, moves it around the room and, if the air balance is not right, carries it through the doorway into the next one. Under-ventilate instead and the sauce room fills with steam, condensation runs on the surfaces and the room stops being cleanable. So the specification had to move enough air to keep each room's own conditions under control, at low enough pressure and velocity not to disturb the product, and with the balance between the two zones set so that air never travels from one into the other.
That is why the ventilation here is specialist low-pressure rather than standard kitchen extraction. The separation between the zones is delivered by the air as much as by the wall between them, so the fans, the ductwork and the supply air all have to be designed as one system with the room layout, not added to it afterwards.
Main and sole contractor, every trade our own
We delivered the full fit-out as main and sole contractor: sauce room, spice room, extraction, cladding, electrical and plumbing. Design was by our CFSP-accredited directors, and because the ventilation, the room construction and the finishes were all ours, the air strategy and the layout were decided together rather than argued about between companies. For a brand that is growing, a single point of responsibility also means one programme, one set of drawings and one number to ring.
Five weeks, under £50k, two zones that stay separate
Delivered in five weeks for under £50k, as main and sole contractor. Condimaniac's Chatham CPU runs a wet sauce room and a dry spice room in the same unit, with allergen-safe separation between them held by specialist low-pressure ventilation as well as by the layout.
Our other sectors page covers production facilities and specialist installations, and our Medway Towns page lists other projects in Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester.