Fareham-based Searle Manufacturing Company is celebrating continued success in the Far East with three prestigious new orders for its coils division from Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.

The UK's leading producer of commercial and industrial cooling products, Searle is to supply the Hong Kong underground railway system with around £300,000-worth of evaporator and condenser air-conditioning coil sets for the refurbishment of about 80 carriages.

An average of around 2.5 million people travel on the metro each day - journeys that would be intolerable without air-conditioning. With only 48 stainless steel seats but capable of accommodating 265 standing passengers in rush hours, each carriage is expected to remain in constant use 19 hours a day for a further 15 to 20 years following refurbishment.

Specially produced to withstand the vibrations and shocks experienced with railway applications, the Searle coil blocks with copper fins - manufactured at the international cooling group site in Newgate Lane, Fareham - will be placed into the rebuilt air conditioning units and located in the roof-space of each carriage.

"We supplied the original coils for the Hong Kong metro so we are delighted to remain on board for their refurbishment programme,'' said OEM sales manager John Hines, who is soon off to the Far East to visit existing and prospective customers.

"We have already supplied coils worth around £2m for the previous metro refurbishment projects over the past five years and this new order will be on-going for most of next year.''

Other new contracts for the company in the Far East are valued in excess of £100,000. These include the supply of heat exchangers to Singapore for installation into a sub-assembly for use in purpose-designed test cells for the testing of computer components.

The specification set by the client's engineering staff demanded tight control over manufacturing tolerances to ensure the stringent environmental conditions necessary were maintained.

More Searle heat exchangers are being manufactured and shipped to Malaysia for the same project but, in this case, are being used to cool the control equipment. The final test equipment is exported all over the world from Malaysia.