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The owner of Waiuku Business Park travelled up from Tauranga at first light today, amid a blaze that tore through a recycling company based at the site.
Sam Wulff told the Franklin Times that the business, Future Post, has two plants in Blenheim and Waiuku. The latter being “the main plant”.
The company recycles plastic waste and converts it into fence posts.
The fire broke out just before 11pm on Monday, November 24, at the commercial site on Kitchener Road.
Police say they are treating the fire as suspicious and have launched an investigation.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) said in an update just after 10am today that the fire had been extinguished.
Wulff says there was no damage to the plant or machinery but a “huge” amount of damage was done to finished stock in the overflow yard.
“The social and financial cost is huge. It will be tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage. There’s a pile of material that is unusable, as well as damage to other neighbouring buildings.”
He said he believes the fire “had to be arson”.
“For someone to [allegedly] decide to be inclined to get their entertainment by setting a fire to a business is pretty gut-wrenching,” Wulff says.
“Their business is repurposing waste plastic which is a huge ecological service and there is a huge amount of damage to finished stock, which is a probably a huge portion of what is damaged beyond a saleable use.”
Fire crews from 16 districts around the Auckland region responded to the blaze, which continued to smoulder into the morning.
