An explosion proof mobile phone for France's chemical industry has to work on the plateformes chimiques, shared industrial zones where specialty producers like Arkema operate alongside industrial gas suppliers such as Air Liquide, whose hydrogen pipeline networks extend across several of these clusters. This page is for the preventionists, maintenance planners and telecoms teams who decide what a person may carry into a Zone 1 or Zone 21 area on those sites. The IS-04Z1 is designed around intrinsic safety rather than a flameproof enclosure.
Launching Q4 2026 · ATEX programme in progress
A plateforme chimique brings several companies onto one site under shared infrastructure, and the addition of hydrogen pipeline networks on top of conventional chemical process areas adds a gas group consideration that pure specialty chemical production alone would not.
Specialty chemical production at Arkema's Jarrie, Pierre-Bénite, Lacq and Carling sites carries Zone 1 and Zone 2 gas classifications, and Ex ib IIC T4 covers the hydrocarbon and process gas groups typical of that production.
As an EU member state, France's hazardous-area equipment requirements are governed by the ATEX directives across the chemical sector.
Air Liquide's hydrogen infrastructure in Normandy and at Fos runs through the same industrial zones as conventional chemical production, meaning equipment on these platforms increasingly needs to cover both gas scopes.
Several producers typically share one plateforme chimique's utilities and safety infrastructure while running separate legal entities, so equipment approved for one company's process area does not automatically extend to its neighbour's.
French specialty chemical and industrial gas production spans several plateformes chimiques.
Chemical sites are classified by process, not by region, so two plants a few hundred metres apart can need different equipment. These are the places named most often when French chemical and gas teams talk about handheld devices.
A specialty plant stops a unit for maintenance on a published window, and entreprises extérieures arrive in numbers. Each crew works under a plan de prévention agreed with the host operator, so a handset that can be enrolled, restricted and collected at the end of the job suits that process.
On a plateforme the host operator, its neighbours and their contractors share roads, utilities and an emergency organisation. The same person may cross from one company's process area into another's within a shift, and each side will want to see the equipment documentation.
Operators walk long routes between reactors, tanks and loading points, with charging points in the control building rather than in the field. A 4,000 mAh battery is specified to cover a shift of calls, photographs and work-order entries.
Ask each operator's procurement and HSE teams what they require of an equipment supplier before a unit enters site. Expect requests for the certificate and marking string, the instructions in French, and a description of how the device is managed and recovered.
No. The device is pre-launch and certification, including ATEX, is still in progress ahead of the Q4 2026 launch.
Hydrogen introduces a gas group consideration distinct from typical process chemicals, so equipment intended for both scopes needs a certification basis covering each.
ATEX is the primary EU regulatory framework; IECEx serves as useful supporting international technical evidence.
No, each company on a plateforme chimique typically runs its own separate procurement process even where the site infrastructure is shared.
Hydrogen sits in group IIC, the most demanding of the three gas groups, so a handset used where hydrogen is present needs an Ex ib IIC marking. The IS-04Z1 target marking is II 2 G Ex ib IIC T4, which is why the IIC element is named on this page rather than left to the datasheet.
That is the purpose of Zone 1 and Zone 21 together. Gas and dust protection sit in the same certification programme, but the zoning for each room still comes from the operator's own explosion protection document, and the marking should be checked against it.
The host operator, through its site rules and the plan de prévention for the job. The device being designed for Zone 1 and Zone 21 does not replace that decision; it only gives the operator a certificate to review once one exists.
Tell us the site, the zone and gas group, and roughly how many handsets. The SAMS team replies by email with the datasheet and the certification schedule for France. The IS-04Z1 is pre-launch and certification is in progress, so there is no list price yet; indicative pricing is issued in writing against a stated quantity and site.
Tell us the zone, gas group and operator. We will send the datasheet and the certification schedule for your market.
