Colac mill's $3m fire bill

A SPECTACULAR fire which caused almost $3 million damage to a Colac timber mill early yesterday is unlikely to affect production, the company said.AKD Softwoods will turn to its Nullawarre plant to cover the impact of the blaze, which could be seen for kilometres after it started about 1.40am.A malfunction in one of the timber drying kilns is thought to be the cause but CFA region six operations manager Malcolm Fallon said investigations were still continuing.AKD Softwoods human resources manager Clint Adams said the blaze would not have an impact on the company's production."In terms of our customers and our output, it won't have much of an effect," he said."We have some spare kilns at our Nullawarre plant which will hopefully be up and running in the next few days."We have a good contingency plan which is under-way and we have plenty of outgoing timber."The recent conditions have helped the company stay on track."We're lucky we're having warm weather which is allowing the timber to dry naturally," Mr Adams said.All employees were required to work yesterday."If anything, we've needed more workers and had people doing a bit of overtime," Mr Adams said. "Even our kiln operator has been in as per normal."The AKD staff were grateful for the work of the firefighters."We can't speak highly enough of what they did," Mr Adams said. "They were able to keep it down to a minimum when it had the potential to be a lot worse."Sixty firefighters from Colac, Irrewarra, Coororooke and Yeo took two-and-a-half hours to control the fire.Mr Fallon said it was lucky the fire was able to be contained in this time. "It could have been a lot worse," he said. "There was potential for a $20 million blaze but it was limited to $2.75 million."It was excellent work by the firefighters and also the staff at AKD who had an initial reaction which was admirable."Two aerial fire bombers from Ballarat and Geelong were also used to control the fire.Three of the kilns caught alight, including a double kiln worth $1 million and a single kiln worth $800,000."Everything the kilns contained such as the timber were also lost," Mr Fallon said.He said firefighters ensured the five other kilns were not at risk. "It was good work that we could contain and confine the blaze to just the double and single kilns."There was no other damage to the property and no injuries.