Potentially Asbestos Impacted Fire Doors- sold by Pacific Door Systems Limited (PDS)

Pacific Door Systems Limited (PDS) recently became aware of a contamination issue involving asbestos fibres impacting one of the categories of fire-rated door ‘cores’ (known as ‘FRB board’ or ‘FRB core’) previously used by PDS in production of Pyropanel fire-rated doors. The FRB board is manufactured by a third party outside of New Zealand.

PDS wishes to stress that the FRB board does not contain asbestos by design. Instead, this is a contamination event in relation to which an explanation and more information is being sought from the third-party manufacturer. It continues to appear that the contamination event as it has impacted FRB board is not ‘uniform’ and therefore should only have affected a portion of the fire-rated doors within the categorisation that are the subject of the recall, with investigations ongoing including as to the precise time period at issue. The 'number of known affected units' (based on PDS' records) and the 'date range this product was sold' that are listed further below are placeholders at present.

Please note that the recall applies to doors in the category the subject of the recall 'for which impact of the contamination issue cannot be ruled out', and we are still assessing whether it is feasible to test potentially affected doors first in order to confirm whether they are impacted or not, so as to limit application of the remedy to only those doors that are confirmed as impacted. If that testing approach is not feasible, the remedy may be applied to all potentially affected doors in the category the subject of the recall.

The hazard arising from the contamination event is potential exposure to asbestos fibres when ‘invasive’ type work is being performed on doors in the category the subject of the recall (such as in the nature of door hardware installation), where impact of the contamination issue on the doors in question cannot be ruled out.

For completeness, WorkSafe New Zealand has confirmed our understanding that for fire-rated doors already installed with the FRB board fully encapsulated, those doors, if left intact, pose no to negligible risk of asbestos exposure and, accordingly, we understand there is no health and safety imperative for the intact doors to be removed and replaced. Potentially impacted doors for which installation works are complete and thus the fire tag (label) has been issued, including relating to door hardware, are therefore not being recalled. We refer to these as Category C doors under the 'What to do' heading.