Insulation industry news from Global Insulation

New Zealand: A fire at an insulation storage building in the Auckland suburb of Onehunga on New Zealand's North Island has been brought under control by fire fighters with a total of 15 fire engines. No one was seriously injured at the facility, operated by Textile Products.

The fire service said that it was called to the incident at about 11:00 on the morning of 16 January 2012. The ambulance service reported that it had treated five people for minor injuries. The cause of the fire is not yet known.

Fire Service incident controller Brian Edwards said there was a possibility the smoke and fumes could be toxic. "We will have to decontaminate some of the firefighters," he said. Edwards also said that there had been fears that the fire may spread to an adjacent chemical waste facility, but this did not happen. One fire engine was kept at the scene overnight.

New Zealand: EnergySmart, a major partner in the New Zealand government's home insulation scheme, has been placed into liquidation. The company owes a reported USD780,000 in outstanding unpaid invoices.

EnergySmart has offices across New Zealand and is one of the Warm Up New Zealand scheme's larger providers, having carried out 5% of 115,000 home insulation retrofits across the country since the scheme began in 2009. The company's turnover in 2009-10 was USD11m, but it made a loss of USD590,000. Mike Underhill, chief executive of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, which runs the USD270m scheme, said he was 'appalled'.

EnergySmart was sold by its founders, Peter and Robyn McKeown, for USD390,000 in 2006. After trying to attract a commercial buyer, the company was acquired by the Hutt-Mana Charitable Trust, who injected USD590,000 in 2009.