Fencing firm Zaun wins multi-million Middle Eastern contract

Zaun is making 50 miles of specially designed fencing – more than 33,000 individual panels – which is being shipping over the coming year.

The size of the job has seen the company buy new equipment and hire another six workers, taking its workforce – which has almost doubled in the last three years – to around 100.

The massive Middle Eastern contract has involved four years of work developing a new flat-panel mesh security fence at the company's Steel Drive factory.

The customer is wreathed in secrecy but Zaun says the fencing will be used "to secure a Middle Eastern site of critical national infrastructure".

Since providing the fencing for the Olympic Park in 2012, the company has supplied prisons and secure data centres as well as seeing its fencing used at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, a nuclear security summit at The Hague and a NATO conference in South Wales.

The latest seven-figure deal will involve shipping more than 200 40ft long containers of its new HiSec Plus fencing panels. The first six containers have already left Wolverhampton and a further six are set to leave before Easter.

Zaun took one of its existing welded wire mesh fence designs and added extra wore to boost security and also keep the panels flat without the need for rails or pressed V-beams. The end result from the design department makes the panel act almost like a dual skin fence but set "quite a challenge' for Zaun's production team.

Zaun research and development manager Adam Christie said: “It’s brilliant to see this new system coming off the production line as it’s been more than four years in the making.

“The customer had a very clear specification of what they wanted, but we’ve been able to work with them over time to make enhancements and to reassure them at every step of the way on quality, design, production, sourcing and logistics.”

The 8ft-high fencing is further secured with stainless steel razor coil topping and coated barbed wire as line wires. The fencing panels are then bolted to steel posts, which are then attached to steel base plates at Zaun by a new robot welder bought specifically for the task, with each post and base plate weighing 75kg – 165lb – in dead weight. The post assemblies are then bolted in the field to a continuous concrete beam.

The enhanced HiSec fencing is based on one of the company's existing designs which is already used for British prisons.