Stafford’s eye future markets
A€3 MILLION smokeless fuel manufacturing plant opened by Ireland and Leinster rugby star Tadhg Furlong in September is one of the most modern and forward thinking in the country. Stafford Fuels opened the new plant at Raheen, New Ross, which is producing innovative low smoke, high heat solid fuels for domestic heating customers.
The company is the largest privately owned distributor of solid fuels in Ireland. All imports are received onto the company’s private jetty located at its state-of-the-art bagging plant at Raheen. From this location, Stafford Fuels distribute solid fuel throughout Ireland.
The opening of the new plant has secured the existing 35 jobs in Stafford Fuels and also created six new positions.
In total between 25 and 30 staff are based at New Ross, with a further six staff at the Staffords depot in Rathnew, County Wicklow and five sales staff on the road.
The new facility covers 20,000 square feet and took just under a year to complete.
Staffords Fuels Managing Director Andy Maher said: ‘A local firm, Hennessy Plant Hire, handled all the civil and building works, very competently I might add. The mechanical work was carried out by Queally Engineering of Dungarvan and the extensive Electrical and Control Panel work was done by another local firm, Millenium Electrical. So it was very much a local project and we are very happy with the high quality work carried out by all these local contractors.’
The business has in excess of 1,000 customers.
‘The coal trade and the solid fuel trade, in general, is a long established business. Traditional coal itself has not changed much in 70 or 80 years with the biggest single development being the ban on traditional (bituminous) coal in Dublin in 1990 and the subsequent roll out so that the smokeless ban now covers all towns with more than 15,000 people including towns in the SouthEast like Wexford, Kilkenny and Waterford. One other significant change has been the growth of smaller convenience bags i.e. 20 Kg and 10 Kg bags which are much easier to handle. We see this trend continuing. The third significant trend, especially since 2000, has been the growth in solid fuel stoves.’
The company - which is one of the leading suppliers of environmentally-friendly domestic fuels offering of high-quality solid fuels to Irish customers - is readying itself for the future as there are current plans being discussed to extend the smokeless ban to the entire country.
The new €3 million facility will initially produce tens of thousands of tonnes of smokeless fuels each year and has the capacity to double this output to over 100,000 tonnes each year. This high specification plant will produce smokeless ovoids, a high heat smokeless fuel, and will use new manufacturing technology to also develop environmentally friendly fuel containing biomass.