A fire broke out in an empty building at the companys Stourton site in south west Leeds at 1pm on Sunday (March 13) and was attended by West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.
And, a spokesman for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service yesterday (March 15) confirmed that crews were still dealing with a very deep seated burning fire 200 tonnes of stored dry recyclable waste that the blaze had spread to.
However, Leeds Paper Recycling said it still intended to open its new 9 million materials recycling facility – the second to be developed on the Stourton site – at the end of April, as previously planned, after carrying out hot commissioning last week.
Jamie Todd, managing director of Leeds Paper Recycling, told letsrecycle.com yesterday: The MRF is untouched and it will be processing waste later this week, on Friday. Obviously stories get out that we have gone up in some and whatever but all the operations are intact and waste is going through the existing MRF.
We are probably a few days away from full processing and the existing MRF has been processing material, he added. At the moment the investigation is ongoing and there is no indication of what started the fire.
Fire
The spokesman for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue told letsrecycle.com that a large mechanical digger was taking material out and it is being extinguished in the yard with some crew members going in with breathing apparatus.
The issue now is getting all the stuff out of the building as there is a very large amount. For example, in two days we have got half of it out and we expect to be there for about another day, the spokesman added.
The Fire Service is working with the Environment Agency and Health Protection Agency on location and reduced its appliances to eight pumps and two aerials. This is in addition to three ground monitors, three jets and one water curtain.
Appliances from Garforth, Leeds, Pontefract, Gipton, Stanningley and Castleford were all called to attend the incident as well as relief crews. Crews tackled the fire all night and a fire investigation has already started.
New MRF
Once fully operational, the new MRF is expected to sort 15 tonnes of dry recyclable material an hour, 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week. This would mean that the full operational capacity of the plant would be in the region of 130,000 tonnes-a-year.
The company carried out hot commissioning at the new MRF last week (March 10) and intends to send material to its existing MRF, which is situated on the same site, for sorting until it receives approval to start operations again.
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The new MRF was constructed by O.Kay Engineering and the plant is constructed to sort commercial commingled and kerbside commingled dry recyclables. The MRF uses waste screens, magnets, conveyors and flip flop screens.
A spokesman for the company said it had no contracts with local authorities in place for material at present but it expected to secure some before the plant was officially opened at the end of April 2011.
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