A fully electric, solar-powered catering facility capable of feeding 600 personnel per sitting marks the latest in a series of infrastructure improvements at the Salisbury Plain training camp.
The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), working alongside Landmarc Support Services and regional construction specialist Knights Brown Construction, has completed a new £7 million kitchen facility at Rollestone Camp on Salisbury Plain, delivering modern catering infrastructure for hundreds of Armed Forces personnel.
The facility, which can serve up to 600 personnel across two sittings, forms part of a wider national programme of investment in kitchen and dining provision across the UK’s training estate. It is fully electric and incorporates solar panels and battery storage to reduce site power demand, directly supporting the Ministry of Defence’s sustainability targets while delivering infrastructure fit for contemporary operational requirements.
The new kitchen is the latest in a series of improvements at Rollestone Camp, which have also included six NetCAP carbon-efficient accommodation blocks providing new beds, showers, ablutions and drying rooms, as well as an Urban Fighting Skills House designed to replicate the complexity of modern urban operations. Salisbury Plain Training Area, the largest in the UK, is used approximately 340 days a year, placing sustained demand on the facilities that support it.
Brigadier Gavin Hatcher, Head of Overseas and Training at DIO, said the investment reflected the organisation’s contribution to both warfighting readiness and the wellbeing of serving personnel, while Major General AJ Smith CBE, Director of Basing and Infrastructure, described the facility as ensuring troops are “properly fuelled for the demands of soldiering” as they prepare for operations worldwide. Landmarc’s Project Manager Andy Green noted that the improvements enhance the lived experience of personnel and help the training estate keep pace with operational demands.
For supply chain businesses active in defence construction, estate management and sustainable infrastructure, projects of this scale across the UK training estate represent continued procurement opportunity as the MOD pursues its modernisation and sustainability agenda.
Relevant capability areas for this contract type include:
- Military estate construction and refurbishment
- Commercial catering facility design and build
- Renewable energy systems integration
- Carbon-efficient accommodation and welfare infrastructure
- Defence training estate support services
- Sustainable building materials and technologies
Image: Landmarc
