Fire breaks out at Smurfit Kappa’s Birmingham recycling plant

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More than 100 firefighters have been on scene to bring a large blaze at a Smurfit Kappa recycling plant in Nechells, Birmingham, under control.

West Midlands Fire Service was called to the plant at 19:40 BST on Sunday. The fire service said 30 appliances had been sent due to the scale of the fire, including two aerial hydraulic platforms, multiple fire engines, a high volume water pumping unit, and one of our drones.

The fire was been declared a major incident, due to the amount of resources in use and the likely extended nature of the incident. Area commander Sam Burton said: “When we arrived on scene, there was around 8,000 tonnes of compressed cardboard on fire.”

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.

Crews from stations across the West Midlands are working to tackle the blaze using main jets. They are working with police and ambulance colleagues, the Environment Agency, Severn Trent Water, and on-site staff, to bring the incident to a safe conclusion. There are no reports of any casualties.

Smurfit Kappa has confirmed that its paper mill in central England was unaffected by a large fire that spread from an adjacent premises and that it did not expect any material impact on production.

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