00:02
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome once again to the ECA Learning Zone webinar series, where we share our webinar platform with our commercial associates. This afternoon, we're joined by our ECA commercial associates, Ama Karbal and ECA's head of technical standards. So we've got Gary Parker, who will talk a little bit first about the ECA and will introduce our friends from Ama Karbal. Today we've got

Leah Daines and Carly Hunter. Before I hand over to Gary, just a note that you can ask us a question at any point during today's webinar. You should have a little speech bubble symbol with a question mark in it. Click on that to ask us a question at any point during today's session and we will get to as many questions as we can at the end of the session. And finally, for me, feel free to check out our full ECA Learning Zone webinar series and all our recordings of previous webinars on our YouTube channel. That's at youtube.com/ecalive. They're also all up on the ECA Members area of the website. That's enough from me. Over to you, Gary.

01:21
Gary, believe we've lost your audio.

01:29
No, we've lost sound for you, Gary.

01:35
whatever you did before to get your sound back. Gary, if you could do that again.

01:45
Back on. There we go, you're on. There we go. Over to you Gary. Thank you. That, if anything, just proves it's live. Good afternoon everyone, thanks for joining us and hope you're doing well. It's not too cold where you are in early November. We've reached out to some of our friends at Amokabel. Sorry if I pronounced that wrong, it's my accent, blame me. Amokabel. Amokabel, knew I'd get it wrong.

And the reason we've done this and put this on today is as you guys fully aware, installations are becoming far more challenging. The world that we live in is difficult, it's hard and there's so many requirements now that we have to work towards. But there's also so many really good solutions and our friends here today have got possibly a good solution that you maybe didn't even know exists. So hopefully today they'll give you a nice presentation about a particular product they've got that can help save time, money and make an installation safer for the end user, which is exactly what you guys need to be aware of. If you can save time, if you can save money, then it's a great, great solution to a problem that you might not have even known existed. So I'll hand you over now straight away to these guys at Amar Amokabel.

Close enough for somebody from Middlesbrough with a funny accent to pronounce. An interesting presentation on a product called FlexiShield that they've got. As Omar mentioned, feel free to ask any questions as you clean or save them to the end. Hopefully, you'll have some interesting questions for the guys and hopefully you'll learn something today. Please, Carly, if you don't mind sharing your screen. Lovely, thank you for that introduction, Gary.

I'm Carly. Hello, everyone. We are, as Gary rightly said, of Amicarball FlexiShield. So hopefully, Gary, can you see the screen there for us for the presentation? Yeah, all good. Brilliant. OK, so we just pop through. So as I said, I'm Carly. I'm the Managing Director at Amokabel FlexiShield. So if you just ping through.

04:13
Apologies for that. So I just want to tell you a bit about the company at first. some of you who have been in contracts in a while may have heard of us and not for the name on the car. We were once pre-wired conduit company and also after that Flexables cables. So we have been going since 2003, but back in 2018 in June.

We were acquired by a Swedish company called Amokabel Group. So the Amokabel Group is a 200 million pounds business and they are situated all across the world. The main office, the head office for Amokabel is actually in Sweden. So we have a big manufacturing facility in Sweden, much bigger than our South Sea or in the UK. There is also a company in Germany, Norway, Australia, and another was situated in Leigh, Manchester. So we are part of that wider group now, which gives us a much bigger facility and a name that we can work towards branding. So we are now called Amokabel Flexisheld Limited as mentioned, and our base approvals have been in place since May 2010.

So we do a range of cables, one being our flagship product. So the FlexiShield product is our flagship product, hence we put it in our name, and that's a BS8436 cable. That is the majority of our sales at this particular unit and factory in Mansfield. Another product in our range is FlexiPower. That is a 90 degree unarmored flexible wiring cable, and that's mainly for lighting circuits.

FlexiMod is another big part of what we do. So the FlexiMod product that is bespoke products for contractors. We do allow direct contract sales for that and that is to accommodate individual requirement on each project. So we will do twisted cores, cables, mylar act, inconduit, out conduit.

06:29
That's just a small example, some with data, some without. So whatever the product the customer wants, product we can provide there. So on that note, we are going to do a bit of a presentation on our flagship product, FlexiShield, and I'm going to hand you over to Leah Daines to do so. So she will discuss that product. So why FlexiShield cables? Why would contractors use FlexiShield over anything else?

So contractors are saving on installation times, therefore they're saving money throughout projects. We've seen some large projects have saved up to 40 % on manual labor costs. So this can be used on indoor and outdoor applications within commercial, industrial and residential buildings. So it's got a UV stable sheath as well as weather resistance. It's very quick and easy to install, strip and terminate. As Carly mentioned, we've had our British Standards since 2004. So it's BS8436 and an Irish approval, which is IS273. So FlexiShield is an alternative to the usual twin and earth, singles and conduit or SWA. So as you can see here, is construction of the FlexiShield cable.

So we have our conductors are plain stranded copper. We have a full-size earth and insulation is XLPE. We also have a foil screen aluminium that's bonded to the sheath which is low smoke and as I said has UV stability and is weather resistant also.

So this is just a picture of the nail test, just to give you a better idea. So the BS8436 is part of the nail test. So if a nail was to penetrate through the cable, it will create the failsafe. So this is just a slight demonstration of sort of how that works. So the foil screening will be in touch with the full size earth. If a nail is to penetrate through, that will create the failsafe.

08:49
So here we've just got a couple of features and benefits of why the contractor would use these. So the cable is quick to install. It's got the built-in sales safe. The product itself is very lightweight and flexible. It can be used in multiple buildings, as we mentioned, commercial, industrial, residential. We have the full-size earth. You've also got the shielding of that foil screen.

which is also bonded to the sheath, so it's very easy for contractors to strip. The UV stable and your low smite halogen free sheath.

Omar Khalil (09:30.969)
So typical applications would be partitions and building voids. You have your main power supplies, fan motor supplies, the compressor supplies, air conditioning and ventilation systems, and your lighting indoor and outdoor.

09:50
So just to give you a better idea of what kind of projects we've installed into, there's just a list there. So there's a lot of hospitals, universities, colleges, we've done a lot of like council homes that have been refurbished. Prisons have been a massive one for us this year especially. And we've also done a lot of the John Lewis stores, Waitrose Currys So as I said, anything big commercial, this is the perfect product for.

So couple of methods for the installation. So it can be installed directly onto brick, stone, metal and wood. You can directly bury it behind plaster or in plastic conduit for re-wire ability. Can be put into cable trays, baskets, in roof spaces and also in ductwork. Can also be on the flooring as well, which we forgot to add.

So a bit of the technical performance criteria. So our range is from a 1.5 mil up to 10 mil. So your 1.5 to 4 mil is the basic approvals all on for the BS8436. And then you've got the Irish approval IS23 on the 6 mil and the 10 mil that we've just brought out is to the BS8436 standard. So they all have that built in fail safe. So your 1.54 mil is 300 to 500 volts, and your 6 mil and 10 mil is 600 to 1,000. So a bit about the BS8436, that's Standard. It must fail safe. The cable must fail safe under a minimum fault current of up to 160 amps. Our FlexiShield achieves 200 amps under nail penetration. So a couple of the standards that we have to go through and pass.

Obviously this is my emissions test, flame retardant test, acid gas emissions, and we have a CPR rating of DCA.

11:57
These are our BASEC approvals. As we mentioned before, we've been getting these approved by BASEC since 2010. So we do the BS843-6 and our IS273. These are all done annually, all tested through BASEC. We also have a lab here where we do the nail testing as well.

So was our brief little presentation. Thank you everyone for listening. We've got all of our details. We're going to send the presentation. So if anyone has inquiries after, please do feel free to get in touch. I do have a short video I believe, Omar is going to show you just to give you a little sneak peek of the factory and how we kind of make the cable and going into a little bit more detail about the BSA 436 and a demonstration.

Yes, thank you, Leah. Thank you, Carly, for that presentation. If you bear with me very briefly, I'll bring up the video in just a moment.

Omar Khalil 13:02
There we go.

13:11
Amokabel FlexiShield are a UK Midland based cable manufacturer established in 2003. Operating from our factory in Mansfield where we produce a variety of cables, one being FlexiShield, the original BS8436 cable, holding basic approvals and CPR rating. This is where we manufacture our BS8436 cable. The construction consists of a low smoke halogen free jacket with UV and weather resistant stability for indoor and outdoor installation.

Bonded to the jacket is an aluminium foil screen which creates the failsafe protection. The construction of each cable size contains a full size earth. Our range of cables come as Standard from a 1.5 to a 10mm in black and white from 2 core and earth to 4 core and earth. We can however produce special builds with different core colours, extra cores and different sheathing colours to a minimum order requirement. FlexiShield is a flexible fixed wiring cable manufactured to BS8436 and IS273 standards.

One of the main performance requirements within these Standards is that the cable must failsafe if penetrated by a nail. This is achieved by applying a heavy duty aluminium tape which is bonded to the inside of the outer sheath.

It is in contact with a bare full-size earth conductor, therefore if the cable is penetrated by a nail, which hit the live phase conductor, the fault current would be broken, meaning this cable can be installed directly into walls, placed into cable trays, roof spaces and in ductwork without any need for any additional protection such as conduit, saving contractors up to 40 % reduction in installation times which within commercial and industrial projects could be a substantial cost saving.

Other features and benefits of the product are as extremely lightweight, flexible and due to the construction of the cable it's quick and easy to strip, allowing a faster termination process within indoor and outdoor applications. FlexiShield offers the market a safer alternative to the traditional cables such as SWA, Twin-in-Earth and singles within conduit.

15:33
Okay, and we're back. that concludes the presentation. I will now hand over to Gary to moderate the Q&A.

15:46
And Gary, we don't have your audio once again.

16:00
Apologies everyone, just bear with us while we get Gary back on audio.

16:08
Nope, can't hear Gary.

16:15
Do what you did last time, Gary.

16:25
Nope, can't hear you.

16:32
No.

16:39
Apologies, everyone. Gary, what I'll do is I'll cover the first question that we've got here from the audience. Let me just pop my webcam back on. So first question here, is your product or are your products available in wholesalers? Yes, so wholesalers are our main group. So wholesalers and distributors, we don't sell FlexiShield direct contractors. So a lot of the wholesalers stock our products.

a lot of their distribution centers also will stop this. So very easy to get hold of. And a broad variety as well of wholesalers, so your roadmills and electricals, your ERS, your exiles, VWs, most ones you will find our products in or have a database of our products. OK, we've got the next one here. Let's just check on Gary while we're here.

Gary, no, I still can't hear you. Apologies, everyone. I'll move on to the next question. Does the cable mean RCD protection is not required if installed in walls without conduit? That could be a question for Gary, actually. I mean, it is correct. Yeah, I can answer that one. So it does mean that RCD protection isn't needed.

It's the whole point of the product. You've got that built in failsafe. So you don't need the conduit. You don't need RCDs. Some sites are still using the products and using RCDs. I think because they're not fully understanding what the product does and what it is, what the BS8436 means. But yeah, the answer to the question is no, you don't need RCD protection.

18:57
We've lost you again, Gary.

Sorry, Gary, we've lost you again, but you were just about to refer to what I thought you were about to refer to, which is why I put the question to you as well. But Gary is referring to a guidance note that we have recently published up on the ECA website. What I'll do is I will share the link to that guidance and a whole load of other links to more resources in an email that all attendees will receive about an hour after we close the webinar.

That email will also include a link to your ECA Professional Development Certificate. So stay tuned for that email after the presentation. just try putting these on. Does that work? Yeah, that's working, Gary. I'm sorry you've got me back. Yeah, so as I was saying, Omar, I think you just mentioned it there. 522.6.204 is the reg where this table comes in handy and it's been listed as a

as an option in indent one for quite some time now, but it's almost a secret amongst installers. People see a steel-wired armored MICC type cable, but the use of A436 cable is almost ignored. And as was mentioned in the presentation, it can save a lot of time in terms of installation. And even the stripping and the terminating can be quite

Quick, I suppose just a quick question for me, for the guys. Has there been any recent projects that you know that York Able has been used on and been successful in? Yeah, so a couple of recent projects. So we're installing into Olympia in London as we speak. Apple project, yeah, Apple down in Bristol, we just recently

20:58
I think there's one more drop and then we're completed on that. The Bristol University, a lot within London. So we've just started installing into King's Road. High end apartment. So I think the apartments are just under a million to four million per apartment. So it's going into those. Just a better quality, safer cable to use.

A lot of new, I mean, it was done it in the past, but a lot of work that we've received this year as well, a lot of prison work. We've seen a lot more of that this year, haven't we? I'm trying to think of the other names. We don't always be in the money center as we get to the bottom of where it's going out to, as you can imagine, and sort of having that middle man as a wholesaler. But we have done some legwork this year to find out where.

where these projects are and what's happening. hence some of the new ones. That's absolutely brilliant. It's interesting that there's an option for Members to use this. They don't have to just necessarily do the same old same old. They can use things like the Flexi Shield. We've had a question in the chat there. Can this cable be used with C type MCVs?

and does it negate RCDs? I think we've covered the RCD space. What type of MCB is going to be used with? Is it the B curve, the C curve or the D curve? is, so the type B and type C, to be honest, I will be honest, we're not super super technical with what it is the electricians have to use. But what I'm going to do is send a copy.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was on our presentation. Bear with me two seconds. Sorry, I'm just going to click back. Yeah, so it operates 32 amp title V, MCV.

23:09
It depends on the application and the install. If there's any sort of questions with regards to particular installs, obviously we have a technical department here where any contractors more than welcome to hang over and email to us and we can get them the most precise answers to each individual install.

So yeah, we've just got on the brochure that I'll send to you guys, we have got a bit more information and it goes into the sort of proactive device ratings and the test current values. So it shows you when you could use a type B, a type C and a type D depending on each sort of current and where they're using it. So we will send that information across. Brilliant. What did you say that email address was to contact you guys?

It will be so it's on the end of the presentation. If not, it will be leah.dames@amokabel.co.uk. Inquiries. Yeah. inquiries@amokabel.co.uk. Our email address is might be easier to spell. Brilliant. Something that you mentioned in the presentation, you talked about you do the cable in white and black. Is it possible to get in other colours?

Yeah, so we do a variety. We basically will do any sort of specific requests and I think with us being sort of a smaller company to obviously the bigger ones like the likes of Prismium, we do value ourselves on, pride ourselves on being able to provide bespoke and with sort of less of a cost implication. So we will always sort of ask for a certain MOQ, which is usually a thousand on

obscure colours, know, we've had, unless we've got it in stock already, because we've had some runovers, we've got purple, for example, on the shelf, we've had all sorts of random requests before, but we will do that. We can do different build ups as well of the product. know, particular things they pull in through, but the colours can be any colour requested of us. Black and the white is purely what we stock. Standard cable.

25:27
So if somebody is doing a specific project where they need a certain cable colour, they can get in touch with you. Ricky Stubbs, now I think the answer might be, the guys might have to get back to you, but Ricky has just asked, does this cable comply with the Diocesan Advisory Committee, or DAC, for electrical installations and maintenance in churches? Is that a question that you've ever come up with? No, is a that come across, but we definitely can.

find out. I think we can. If Ricky in the chat doesn't mind, we can share your contact details with Carly and then they can get back in touch with you. Another question from me, I mentioned at the start that this cable is being listed in 7671 now for quite some time as an alternate option, but it's almost a secret to an extent. Have you guys seen

a rise in the use of this cable since 7671 has required more RCDs and there's been additional requirements and then we've had increasing quality of installations in some cases. Have you seen a rise in sales? Yeah, definitely. Over the past year, we've seen a 20 % increase through our sales. 20%, which is fantastic.

I think, you know, as regulations are becoming time for installs, this is, our cable is specified a lot. So it's within that consultancy spec to ensure that they're getting a higher level of install as opposed to, you know, your standard twin and earth of you when you're dealing with buildings such as schools and hospitals, places that are obviously high footfall, lot of people in, it needs to be of a higher

compliance level. So we definitely have seen an increase and I think as the years go on and health and safety gets tighter and there's more regulations put in, it will definitely do nothing but go on the rise. Absolutely, yeah. think it's nice just to give people that option, isn't it? In some cases it might be best to use solution A or solution B, but if they don't even know about solution C, they'll never even try it, they'll consider it.

27:52
So I think that's it from the guys in the chat. I don't think there's anything else in there, unless anybody dropped something in fairly quickly. Just thank you from me and from ECA, just saying great to see this product on the market. It's an innovative one, but it also isn't. It's been around for such a long time and it's a shame that it's not widely known about.

Yeah, exactly. It's just nice to know that actually I can add on to this installation or I can make this installation and then it allows me to consider other protection methods, not just the same old same old. I know that you said that the email address for you guys is on the presentation, but if you want to just give that out again, if anybody wants to be in touch. Yeah, so I'd like to write it in the chat. Would that be helpful?

Maybe, I don't know where the chat goes to. Okay, well it is inquiries@amokabel which is amokabel.co.uk. if anybody needs any information, technical data, any questions about particular installs, please do send that over to us. Just a quick one that I did forget to mention when we were discussing colours and MOQs.

We do in fact do a rotor repellent as well, which is the yellow sheathing. It's great for farming areas and also central London areas. So that is another product within our range, which is actually stocked on the shelf. And that's again through the wholesalers that you guys work with. Yeah. Any more questions in the chat Omar that have come through?

Note that it's it for questions from the audience. I'll say thank you once again to everyone and also a reminder that you will receive an email in about an hour's time. we just had a question come in actually. Can this be used in thatch also? good one. Yeah. Very good question. Yes. Fantastic. Thank you.

30:07
Brilliant. yeah, there'll be all the links and resources that we mentioned today. They'll be in your post-event email along with your certificate, your ECA Professional Development Certificate and any other details that you'll need to contact Leah and Carly after the session. So thanks again, everyone, and have a great rest of your afternoon. Thank you. Have a good evening. Thank you, everyone. Bye.