Egger still taking waste wood despite Hexham fire

Fire services were called to the scene at 10.26pm on Sunday, after which 60 firefighters and eight fire engines tackled the blaze using two aerial ladder platforms and a foam tender throughout the night, according to Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service.

The fire was contained to the biomass plant, which provides heat energy for Eggers chipboard manufacturing processes at the Hexham site. As a result, all production at the site, at which there are 500 employees, was shut down following the fire.

The biomass facility runs on waste wood from the chipboard production, as well as a proportion of recycled wood fibre that has been through a recycling plant and cleaned. It has a heat capacity of 50MW, of which 36MW is used as hot gas to dry wood chips and 12MW is used as thermal oil heating for the chipboard production and lamination presses.

Timberpak, the subsidiary of Egger UK that sources and recycles wood waste for chipboard manufacturing at Hexham, said although deliveries of waste wood to the site had to be stopped on Monday (May 27), the site was receiving material again on Tuesday.

A spokesman for Timberpak said waste wood consumption at Hexham would not be affected by the biomass plant fire.

An investigation has been launched into the exact cause of the blaze, which is thought to have started after thermal oil ignited and ruptured a pipe. No one was injured and no raw wood materials were affected by the fire.

Egger UK said it expects to know more about the level of damage to the biomass plant and when it might be up and running again by the end of the week.

An Egger UK spokeswoman said that the impregnation line at the site, which processes paper for use in the firms melamine-faced chipboard production, started running again yesterday using stand-by gas boilers (May 28) and that its lamination processes had resumed today (May 29). Full chipboard manufacturing production is expected to commence tomorrow.

Fire

The fire was brought under control in the early hours of Monday morning, with firefighters then paying regular visits to the site throughout that day as it cooled down.

A spokesperson for the fire service said: Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service (NFRS) has begun an investigation into the cause of a fire at a timber processing plant in the west of the county. Residents were allowed to stay in their homes but a cordon was set up around the plant. A report will be prepared following a full investigation by NFRS and Egger.

Support to tackle the fire was also provided by Tyne and War Fire Service and Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service.

In a statement, Egger UKs joint managing director, Bob Livesey, said yesterday: We will be working with fire investigators to determine the exact cause of the incident, which is our first since the new plant opened in 2007. Thankfully there were no injuries, all of our detection and safety systems worked extremely well and the fire service was able to bring the fire safely under control. Im grateful to firefighters from Northumberland Fire & Rescue for their quick and professional response that meant damage was confined to that one small area of our site.

Egger UK acquired the Hexham chipboard plant in 1984, which produces wood-based panels and melamine-faced chipboard for the construction industry. The firm is a subsidiary of Austria-based wood processing company Egger Group, which employs 7,000 people worldwide.

• Elsewhere in the biomass sector, renewable energy firm Estover Energy has announced plans to develop a 65 million biomass combined heat and power plant at the Discovery Park at Sandwich, Kent. The plant will process wood fuel from local forestry and woodland within 80 miles to generate 11MW of power and 8MW of heat for the national grid enough to supply the equivalent of 21,000 homes. The firm intends to submit a planning application for the facility to Dover district council and, if granted, hopes to start construction in 2014.