The blaze was confined to the biomass plant and took three hours to put out before the cooling-down process began with regular checks throughout Monday.
No one was hurt. With the heat loss to presses and drying processes, all production stopped, however, some paper impregnation resumed by Tuesday and chipboard and lamination lines were restarted by the middle of the week using standby gas boilers.
“Stocks are generally at a comfortable level following the weekend production so we do not anticipate any real disruption to supply. Additional volumes will be supplied from our Barony factory in Scotland for our lamination facilities,” said Egger joint managing director Bob Livesey.
Sixty firefighters from across the north-east were called to the site. A full-scale investigation into the cause of the blaze was launched.
“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,” Mr Livesey said.
He told local media: “The intensity of the blaze was due to thermal oil used in the heating system catching fire and our engineers, together with colleagues from Germany, are working to assess the amount of damage and the cause of the fire.”
“I’m 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 is the largest manufacturing employer in Northumberland with about 500 staff.
