Since it opened in 1970, keeping the animals happy has been the key to success at Blair Drummond Safari Park – and contentment levels have hit new heights since the opening of a new elephant house.
The Princess Royal was on hand to lead the celebrations this summer marking the completion of a five-year redevelopment of the elephant habitat, whose new house is home to three African elephants.
Steadmans, the leading one-stop-shop building products manufacturer, provided the high-spec materials used in the construction process, including 1,000 linear metres of insulated panels, vital for ensuring the internal temperature does not drop below the minimum permissible 16ºC. Along with zed purlins, eaves beams and cee sections, the company also provided roof lights, sag bars, eaves and knee braces, side rail struts, diagonal wires, cleats, fixings and flashings.
Building an elephant house might seem an unusual project, but not for Steadmans – the company has already provided the park with materials for accommodating giraffes, chimpanzees, lemurs, bears and rhinoceroses.
“Our relationship with Steadmans must go back more than 20 years,” says Gary Gilmour, general manager at Blair Drummond. “For the elephant house, we again needed a professional company which would give us good advice and deliver on time, so we knew where to go. I know I can phone Steadmans and the team will come out, measure up the project and send me a quote in less than a week.
“True to form, Steadmans again displayed first-class knowledge about the materials we needed and delivered a quality service over the elephant house. There were no hold-ups in the materials being delivered and everything arrived on time. We’ll definitely use the company for future projects too.”
Comprising two outer steel skins with an integral PIR insulation core, Steadmans’ AS35 insulated panels are available in a wide range of colours and complement a broad variety of pre-engineered construction products, such as gutters, roof lights and doors.
AS35 panels are manufactured in a quality process certified to ISO 9001:2008, using non-ozone-depleting technology. This gives designers an environmentally responsible product, with excellent thermal performance and a predicted service life of 40 years. Available in a range of thicknesses, the panels can be specified to achieve insulation U-values to comply with the latest L2 regulations. The panels are approved by the Loss Prevention Certification Board.
As well as elephants, the 120-acre Safari & Adventure Park is home to tigers, zebras and camels.
Blair Drummond has several drive-through reserves and a boat safari. Several exotic and endangered animals are kept in its collection and takes part in captive breeding and research programmes for endangered species.
