BOSSES at a Burnley manufacturing plant have been forced to stop production after a fire caused more than £20,000 of damage.

A faulty piece of equipment at RGS Sheet Metal Ltd, in Billington Road Industrial Estate, caused the blaze on Sunday afternoon.

Firefighters spent an hour tackling the fire to prevent it spreading elsewhere in the unit where staff were working.

One of the firm’s directors, Lyn Craig, said the machine, a Trumpf Trumatic L2530 laser-cutting machine, was completely destroyed after sawdust caught fire.

She said: “At the moment production has shut down and the assessors are in to look at it.

“The damage to the machine is bad. It was on at the time and people were working with it but a spark went off and it started smoking.

“There were people in the building although no-one was using the machine at the time and no-one was injured. It’s purely a technical fault.”

The firm’s technical director, Warren Hill, said it could take up to eight weeks for the machine to be replaced and that orders would have to be sub-contracted in the meantime.

He added that the fire came as a blow during the company’s busiest December in five years, but said staff remained upbeat.

The steel firm specialises in computer numerical control (CNC) technologies which include laser-cutting, punching, bending, shearing, welding, powder-coating and perforating.

Two crews from Burnley fire station were called to the incident by staff shortly after midday on Sunday.

Nine firefighters used breathing apparatus, a hose reel, a thermal imaging camera and a hearth kit to extinguish the flames.