Contractor avoids £318,000 in costs after close call with Li-ion battery fire

Willmott Dixon had installed Armorgard’s VoltHub battery charging unit on the unnamed site, which contains individual charging lockers for batteries to mitigate the risks of them overheating or catching fire.

One battery stored in a locker in the VoltHub unit ignited overnight on the contractor’s site in January 2025 but an automatic fire suppression system, which is isolated to each locker, kicked in. The unit also set off an alarm to alert staff to the fire, while protecting all the other batteries within the unit.

Willmott Dixon senior site manager Gavin Coleman said, “We had an incident where we had batteries that were being charged in the charging bank. Overnight, one of the batteries must have caught fire and the Armorgard did what it needed to do. The fire suppression kicked in, suppressed the fire, and the first thing we knew about it was when we came in and opened the site and the alarm was going off.

“If we had been using our normal, traditional locker system in the canteen or elsewhere on site, the consequences could have been completely different. Had it been in the canteen, the fire could have been severe, potentially spreading to the offices and beyond.”

Willmott Dixon estimated that the loss of property in such a fire could have cost around £68,000, while the site would have had to close for a week, resulting in operational disruption costing another £250,000.

Armorgard head of product development Matt Partridge added, “This incident underscores the vital importance of prioritizing safety in battery charging. The VoltHub’s design prevented what could have been a devastating event, protecting both people and assets. Safety innovation is at the core of what we do, and this outcome reinforces the value of proactive measures.”

The VoltHub was launched in September 2023 and Armorgard sells either directly to end users like Willmott Dixon through its distributor network or to hire partners.

With a list price of £12,636 (although discounts are apparently available through some distributors), it is currently available only in the UK but Armorgard said it has plans to launch into other territories.