JONESBOROUGH, Tenn.—Hexpol A.B. said it will receive $74 million in the insurance settlement related to the Jan. 7 fire at its factory in Jonesborough.
The company said $10 million of the insurance funds were paid in April, and the balance will be paid to Hexpol by the end of October. It said in a Sept. 27 statement that the insurance case is closed.
Firefighting crews fought the blaze for more than 12 hours, with one employee hospitalized and the other 22 workers safely evacuated from the building.
Hexpol N.A. President Ken Bloom said shortly after the fire that the blaze was a mixer fire, where product caught fire in the mixer and ended up spreading to other parts of the facility, including the raw material inventory area.
"Even though the sprinkler system came on, (the fire) was just very aggressive and continued to spread," Bloom said at the time. "We lost our big mixer line and almost all the raw materials. We did salvage some equipment in other parts of that plant that weren't as badly damaged—one intermesh line and a strainer, and some lab equipment. But overall, it's a total loss from the standpoint of the plant."
He added that the compound that was running in the mixer was a stable compound with a long history of successful processing.
Hexpol said in its Sept. 17 statement that the funds received for insurance as well as the costs associated with the fire will affect operating profit as non-recurring items.