New business building and the expansion of existing capacities

In order to ensure the development of new activities and appropriate support for our customers in the future, we purchased the facility and the associated land in the immediate vicinity of the existing business building in October 2022.

In the years from 2015 to 2019, we successfully carried out the investment in new premises, which enabled almost all SIQ activities to be combined at one location. But since changes and development are our constant, in our existing premises, we are not able to ensure adequate areas for the implementation of increasingly complex tests, the expansion of activities and, at the same time, the increasing number of employees. The conceptual design of new business premises emerged and matured this year. The new building will consist of an underground garage, ground floor and three floors with a total surface area of approximately 12,000m2. The underground garage will be used for parking spaces, warehouses and necessary mechanical installations. The ground floor will be mainly dedicated to setting up a larger EMC chamber that will allow the testing of large products (e.g. whole vehicles) on the effects of EMC. The ground floor and the first floor are expected to include:

• testing the electrical safety of large products — test pieces, such as charging stations, energy storage devices and power electronics (E-mobility);
• testing the electrical safety of medical devices and household appliances;
• laboratory activity related to explosion protection, which will be moved from Tržaška cesta in Ljubljana;
• activity of a notified body for medical devices;
• appropriate office space.

The premises on the second and third floor will be used for the expansion of activities in the following stages and years after construction. The existing business premises and the new building will be logically an integrated whole with a transport route, which will serve for the transport of samples and as a passage between buildings. The new office building will be sustainable, including a solar power plant on the roof to cover 20–25 % of the electricity consumption. Completion of the new facility is foreseen in the next three years.

In December 2022 and January 2023, we will also carry out the renovation of existing business premises in order to strengthen the existing test capacities and activities. The renovation will cover, among other things, the setting-up of the EMC semi-anechoic chamber for the purpose of testing components from automotive industry, the rearrangement of the lobby and reception, additional booths, the canopy over the entrance/exit of the transport route and more.

The EMC chamber for testing components from the automotive industry will be a major financial investment and will allow measurements/tests to be carried out in the frequency range from 9kHz to 6GHz and an electromagnetic field power of 200V/m. The existing chamber cannot provide an adequate response in terms of time of implementing the commissioned tests, despite three-shift work, which is why the expansion is necessary. The chamber will meet the requirements of the CISPR 25, MIL-461F (military equipment) and RTCA DO-160G (components for aeronautical industry) standards.