Since the 14th July we have been overwhelmed with messages of support and offers of help from the industry: thankyou everyone who has got in touch, it has meant an enormous amount to everyone here in Southampton. It has also galvinised us to build back better. To all wellwishers, customers and suppliers alike here is an update about the situation at our Southampton base.
This ariel image (taken on the morning of 14th July) shows the fire at it's source burning cars at the property on the neighboring site to ours. Having spread across the boundary fence you can see the plume of smoke as the fire starts to engulf the Custm Covers stores and in turn the adjacent linings hire department:
We were lucky: the Hampshire fire brigade who were on site quickly and in force, did an amazing job containing the fire and putting it out. Our fire breaks and doors safeguarded most other areas of our premises, resulting in only 17% of our buildings and 10% of the whole site being affected by the fire.
When the fire was put out this is an Ariel shot showing the extent of the damage to Custom covers buildings:
For customers to reiterate where we are:
Outstanding frame sales and orders are unaffected and we are open for business
For PVC sales and orders we have lost one PVC welder: so we are essentially back to 90% capacity with raw materials now on site for all standard PVC manufacture.
For decorative lining sales, we are at 60% capacity awaitng replacement our raw material stock.
We do hold a limited amount of PVC & Linings standard CC specification stock.
For linings hire, 90% of our stock has been destroyed so we are unable to fulfil linings hire orders in the short to medium term.