A fire affecting 16,000 tonnes of waste wood stock at UK Wood Recyclings Wilton facility on Teesside has been extinguished more than two weeks after it first broke out.
Cleveland Fire Brigade and fire crews from the adjacent SembCorp Utilities Wilton 10 biomass power plant put out the fire at the facility near Redcar in Middlesbrough on Tuesday night (January 7).
The blaze was first detected in the early hours of Monday December 23, with five fire crews from Cleveland Fire Service tackling the incident at its peak.
The wood affected by the fire was stored at the site for recycling into a number of products, including animal bedding as well as biomass fuel for the adjacent Wilton 10 biomass facility.
UK Wood Recycling said it has continued to supply fuel to the adjacent Wilton Power Station and would be diverting wood from its other storage sites to ensure there is no impact on product supply going forward.
As a result, a spokeswoman for the company said that she did not expect the incident to impact on prices.
The Environment Agency is now set to begin an investigation into the cause of fire next week, although it is not thought to be suspicious.
Extinguished
Due to the volume of the waste wood involved, the fire service had previously decided the best option was to allow the fire to burn itself out in order to help to reduce the impact of the smoke on local air quality (see letsrecycle.com story).
‘We are now in the process of cleaning up the site and working with the Environment Agency to determine when we can reopen but we hope it will be by early next week at the latest.’
Gary Jones, site manager at UK Wood Recycling
However, according to UK Wood Recycling, by Monday (January 6) the stack of wood had reduced by 80% in size and as a result, the Cleveland Fire Brigade decided to actively tackle the seat of the fire with a view to extinguishing it.
Gary Jones, site manager at UK Wood Recycling, commented: “We are very grateful to Cleveland Fire Brigade and SembCorp Utilities Fire Service for the on-going work they have done to manage this situation for us, particularly their unfaltering coverage over the Christmas period.
We are now in the process of cleaning up the site and working with the Environment Agency to determine when we can reopen but we hope it will be by early next week at the latest.
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The North Eastern company was originally set up by Hadfield Wood Recyclers and accepts all grades of non-hazardous wood such as kitchen units, pallets and doors at the site.
The company uses lower grade material, which is cleaned and blended by the firm, to produce fuel for the biomass plant.
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