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During British Science Week, with its theme of change and adapt, Diamond Light Source highlights the innovative logistical solutions behind the transport of a critical component for the Diamond-II upgrade. By implementing smart adaptations, the team reduced transport costs by 75% and cut CO₂ emissions by 96%, ensuring the efficient delivery of a key element for the UK’s next-generation synchrotron.
The upgrade to the UK’s national synchrotron is one of the largest and most ambitious science infrastructure projects in the country. It is a prime example of how adapting and advancing research facilities will bring about significant change to the UK’s scientific capabilities.
With a multimillion budget, it ranks among the top UK scientific investments and will ensure Diamond remains one of the world’s leading synchrotron facilities in the future. The upgrade is also one of the most strategically important projects in the country in terms of its impact across multiple scientific disciplines, supporting physics, chemistry, materials science, structural biology and engineering. The upgrade will provide enhanced imaging and analysis capabilities, helping the UK to remain at the forefront of scientific discovery.
The Diamond-II upgrade is a project combining complex engineering, as well as logistical and planning activities, which are essential to ensure project success while minimising cost and disruption to the ongoing operations of Diamond. A major part of this is the sourcing of materials, which includes hundreds of superconducting magnets. Integral to the production of the magnets is samarium cobalt, a type of rare-earth magnet that does not require an external power source to maintain a magnetic field. The sourcing and delivery of this material has been just one of the many logistical steps needed.
The delivery of the samarium cobalt marks one of the first major milestones in sourcing materials for the Diamond-II upgrade. It started its journey in Shanghai at the beginning of December 2024 aboard the French container vessel CMACGM Louis Bleriot. The shipment presented the supply chain team at Diamond some challenges that they were able to overcome by adapting their processes and re-thinking their original plans.
The samarium cobalt raw material (Sm2Co17) is only available in China, where there has been investment in the processing of rare earth metals that originate mainly in central Africa. Due to capacity issues, the supplier could only release the volume of magnets nearly six months earlier than envisaged, thereby presenting a storage issue to solve.
Fortunately, space was secured in an STFC facility in Harwell campus that is ideally suited to accommodating this palletised material for the period prior to the building of the girders that will house the magnets. Working in partnership with campus colleagues solved the storage issue.
The original transport plan was to opt for air freight as an export route from China, but the team also looked at other possibilities.
The choice of shipping the materials by sea freight resulted in a 75% saving of the original cost and a reduction of CO2 emissions of 96%. The three-month journey also shortened storage time, creating another cost reduction through adaptive planning and foresight.
The materials have now safely arrived and are ready to be used in the exciting next steps of the upgrade, a project that will undoubtedly see numerous logistical revisions as staff quickly react to new opportunities.
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron science facility, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
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