LONDON (Reuters) -A large fire has ripped through a major packaging plant in central England owned by Smurfit Kappa, with a large amount of paper and cardboard bales on fire in a warehouse.
West Midlands Fire Service said fire crews from across the West Midlands region around Birmingham had made progress containing the blaze throughout the night. It said there were no reports of any casualties.
Ireland’s Smurfit Kappa is Europe’s largest paper packaging producer. The Birmingham plant is one of two paper mills it operates in the U.K. and it produces 500-700 tonnes of packaging paper every day, which is later converted into cardboard boxes.
The fire service said that at the height of the blaze it had more than 30 fire appliances in use, including two aerial hydraulic platforms, multiple fire engines, a high volume water pumping unit, and a drone.
It said it had declared the fire a major incident after 8,000 tonnes of compressed cardboard caught fire. Pictures posted by the fire service online showed bales of cardboard on fire across a large area of the site.
The fire service said it expected to be in attendance in some capacity for at least the next 48 hours.
Packaging companies have had to meet a surge in demand for their products over the last two years and Smurfit said earlier this year that its product range remained effectively sold out in almost all of the 36 countries it operates in.
(Reporting by Kate Holton in London and Padraic Halpin in Dublin, Editing by Kylie MacLellan)
