Clean-up gets under way after Warburtons blaze (From The Bolton News)

Clean-up gets under way after Warburtons blaze

8:50am Saturday 31st July 2010

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A HUGE clean-up operation is set to begin today after a massive fire tore through the Bolton headquarters of Warburtons.

More than 100 staff were evacuated from the Hereford Street plant on Thursday when the blaze broke out in the oven which is used to create the company’s new line of crisp-style snacks.

Firefighters were still damping down the site last night and scouring the burned building using thermal- imaging cameras to ensure nothing was left smouldering.

Investigators were in the plant on Thursday trying to determine how the blaze started, but the full results of will not be available for several days.

A fire service spokesman said Warburtons staff would not be allowed back into the building until the site had been made safe.

Staff were back at work yesterday, but were given temporary new jobs, either helping with the distribution operation or on the production line at the other Bolton bakery in Waters Meeting Road.

The fire service spokesman added: “The fire started accidentally, and we are focusing our investigation on an industrial oven.

“The fire has gone through the roof of the building, so there are structural issues.”

The fire was contained to one 200m by 50m building, about 20 per cent of the Hereford Street site, which housed two production plants for snacks and bread.

The blaze destroyed the snacks plant, but bosses said the bread plant, which is separated by a wall, had suffered only smoke damage. The bread production machinery needs to be cleaned up and repaired, but bosses hope to bring it back online within the next few weeks.

The oven at the centre of the blaze was used to make Warburtons’ new Chippidy- DooDaas, a low-fat alternative to crisps made from baked pitta bread.

The snack has not yet been officially launched, but has been on limited sale in some shops for a few months.

ChippidyDooDaas, which were only produced in Bolton, will now disappear from shelves until production is back online, which could take several months, and the future of the 12 staff who make them is now uncertain.

However, Warburtons bosses have vowed that the snack will return.

Spokesman Andrea Law said: “We want to say thank you to Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue and to our own people for helping with deliveries.

“We’re really pleased that we’ve been able to have minimal impact on deliveries, but in terms of cost or damage or impact on people, we won’t know until Monday.

“We are a family business, and we do try to look after people as best we can.”

The Hereford Street distribution operation is now back up and running, and products are being shipped in from Warburtons’ other 13 bakeries across the country.

The cost of the damage is not yet known, but insurance assessors will be visiting the bakery in the next few days.

Warburtons was in the middle of a £36 million refurbishment of the bakery when the fire broke out at about 2.50pm on Thursday.

Ten fire engines and more than 60 firefighters were on the site at the height of the blaze.

Last year, Warburtons doubled its profits to £32 million after a 15 per cent rise in sales to £510 million.

It is the country’s biggest bakery, employing more than 4,230 people nationally and producing more than two million products every day.

The Warburton family is worth almost half a billion pounds, according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List.

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