MOTORISED scooters worth around £7,500 have been destroyed during a fire at a mill in Farnworth.

Fire crews believe a battery attached to one of the electric miniature scooters -- worth £150 each -- overheated and sparked the blaze in a storage unit at Harrowby Mill, Harrowby Street.

The two-storey mill is a mixture of used and disused units.

The blaze at 8.30am on Saturday began on a ground floor unit which was being used to store about 50 scooters by Eccles-based firm BIS Limited, who had only rented the unit the day before.

Some of the scooters -- imported from China -- were in boxes.

They were due to be sold at the company's shop in Eccles.

Property Manager of the mill, Paul Duffy, said: "Luckily the units are made of breeze blocks so damage was limited. The fire went through the ceiling and damaged some of the floorboards in the unit above but that was empty."

"At first we thought it would be kids who had seen the scooters being brought in but, after speaking to the firefighters, we are confident it was a fault to one of the scooters."

"We had only rented the unit out 24 hours before. They wanted it to store the scooters because they were selling so fast at the shop."

Station Officer Neil Mercer, of Farnworth Fire Station, said today: "We managed to salvage a few of then but most were destroyed."

The blaze spread upwards and across into the floorboards and ceiling space of two adjoining disused units.

Both were left badly smoke-logged.

Crews were forced to rip up floorboards and ceiling panels after dousing the flames.

They remained at the scene for five hours.