'Blueprint for Success' has steel at the heart of the new Tesco stores in Ireland

Corus Ireland has provided both specialist steel to suit the architectural blueprints of Tesco new standard concept footprint and the special grade temperature resistant steel for the new Dublin cold store.

Tesco growth in the retail sector looks set to continue and the company have embarked on an ambitious expansion programme involving the development of new retail stores and the building of an additional large cold store in Dublin to support the supply chain to it’s stores across Ireland.

The newly opened Tesco store Cookstown, Co Tyrone has achieved its completion targets on-time following the smooth progress of work on-site by the main site contractors Patton’s and Coleraine based steel fabricators, Beveridge Engineering Ltd.

The new 51,326 sq ft store is based on a 250 tonne structural steel framework, using unusually long lengths of 21.5m structural steel roofing beams, supplied by Corus Ireland and then fabricated at the Beveridge factory in Coleraine, before being erected on-site.

The new design follows a standard concept footprint, which has been developed by Tesco for new stores and which uses very long length beams to maximise potential floorspace for shelving and customers space in the aisles. The main store superstructure is a high bay, single storey braced frame with a 12m x 21 m structural UC internal column grid and perimeter UC columns at 6m centres. The roof structure comprises of UB rafters at 6m centres spanning 21m between the perimeter columns and internal UB spine beam.

The steel beams for the project were rolled at the start of May 2004, shotblasted and primed by Corus Extra Processing, Teeside and delivered direct to Beveridge Engineering in Coleraine at the start of June. There were no major delays to the supply and erection of steel despite the worldwide steel shortages of 2004.

Tesco Project Manager Ross Campbell explained that timescales for the project had been tight and that there had been fears that the worldwide steel shortages would create costly project delays.

’Corus Lisburn were able to source the steel on-time for us despite our concept specific steel requirements. There were no delays at all in the delivery of the steel from Corus or in the subsequent fabrication by Beveridge and this was a very quick turnaround. Steel frameworks are ideal for our retail stores as they can be constructed quickly and to our standard blueprints and allow us to truly maximise our available floorspace.’

‘This is the second store that Beveridge Engineering have tackled using our new Tesco concept floorplan with its structural framework and we have been very pleased with the result in both stores,’ he added.

Tesco’s are also expanding across Ireland with several additional new stores. In 2004 a new store was opened in Ballymoney and four additional new stores will open in spring and early summer 2005, at the Dundrum Shopping Centre, Dublin; at Mahon Point, Cork; in Middletown, County Cork; and in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim.

To support this growing retail sector, Tesco are also in the process of constructing a major new additional cold store at Ballymun, Dublin, which is planned for completion in spring 2005.

This project has also used unusual specification steel to withstand the very cold temperatures which will be present in this major new cold store.

The steel is a special top of the range grade of steel supplied by Corus Ireland and is designed to withstand low temperatures down to -20°C and is know as S355J2G3.

Noel Manning from the Corus Dublin sales team explained, ‘The steel was rolled and produced as a special order from Corus Mills in the UK and then shot-blast and primed at our steel processing service centre in Lisburn, before being delivered directly to the steel fabricator LMH Engineering Ltd of Arklow, who were appointed to fabricate and erect this specialist steel framework, for main contractors J. Manning & Sons of Dublin.’