Two machines.£445,000.Gone.

One vending machine. £265,000.

It stood in the entrance of a university hospital campus, lit up and humming, with nobody watching. Then an electrical fault developed deep inside the cabinet.

The fire took hold behind the panels where no one could see it. By the time it broke out, the machine was gutted to a blackened shell, smoke had stained the glazed entrance around it, and the damage had reached an estimated £265,000. All of it from a single unit.

Incidents like this show how quickly a fault inside a compact, unattended enclosure can escalate, and why protection needs to act automatically, at the source, before anyone even knows there’s a problem.

Tennis ball machine: £180,000 in damage

Tennis equipment was destroyed after its lithium-ion battery ignited while on charge, resulting in over £180,000 in damage and repair costs. Replacing the machine itself cost £1,200.

Once thermal runaway starts, a lithium-ion cell produces its own heat and toxic gas, and portable extinguishers do little to stop it.

NHS sterilisation unit: two fires, two outcomes

A bank of six machines on the 4th floor of an NHS hospital sterilises medical instruments at very high temperature, a service patient care depends on. A fire broke out inside one machine.

A battery exploded. The cabinet held.

A purpose-built, fire-rated power tool battery charging cabinet had FirePro installed inside, triggered by an internal smoke detector. A lithium-ion battery inside it exploded.

The heat scorched the floor beneath the cabinet. Inside, the FirePro unit discharged, the charging supply shut off and the fire alarm and BMS were signalled. The fire did not spread to the other batteries, and the power socket at the back of the cabinet survived intact.