Closed Loop Dagenham damaged by “small fire”

Fire engines were called to the plant, which became the first in the world to recycle mixed plastic bottles back into food grade plastic when it opened in June 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story), at 9.24pm, just four minutes after the fire broke out.

London Fire Brigade confirmed that six fire engines and around 30 firefighters attended the fire, which was under control by 12.34am this morning, and that the cause of the blaze was now under investigation.

None of the 17 staff working in the plant at the time were injured in the incident.

In a statement, Closed Loop Recycling confirmed that a “localised” fire had broken out on the plants PET bottle recycling line, and claimed that the blaze was contained “swiftly”, adding that, with the fire put out, there was no further risk of outbreaks.

It added: “Whilst the cause of the fire is still being investigated, it is likely that it was caused by a technical fault. There is no environmental impact to the local area and inside the plant there has been some loss of stock but a full assessment of the damage is currently underway.”

Speaking to letsrecycle.com this afternoon (October 14) about the incident, a spokeswoman for Closed Loop said that it was “too early” to say exactly what stock had been affected, but she stressed that any impact on the plant's suppliers of waste plastic bottles – such as Veolia – and its customers would be “minimal”.

She added that the company had been in touch with its suppliers as soon as it knew about the fire.

The company's managing director, Chris Dow, praised the “initiative” of the plant's staff in limiting the blaze to the PET line, and added that: “Our team will have the plant fully operational again by the end of today, with full operations restored within a matter of weeks.”

The spokeswoman explained that sorting and grounding bottles into flakes at the plant – the first stage of the process – was not affected, but that the “washing and food grade” for PET “will be affected for a few weeks”.

PET bottles which enter the facility are sorted and then ground into flake before being 'super-cleaned' to produce a raw material that can be used in food applications.

The £12 million Dagenham facility has received considerable praise since it opened, being hailed by politicians from all sides of the political spectrum, while WRAP's chief executive Liz Goodwin claimed its opening represented a “step change” in plastics recycling.

The list of customers for the HDPE and PET flake produced by the plant, which can reprocess up to 35,000 tonnes of mixed plastic bottles a year, includes big names like Coca Cola, Marks and Spencer and milk carton manufacturer Nampak.