The blaze broke out at Lancaster-based Standfast & Barracks on Tuesday evening (3 January).

Lancashire Fire & Rescue Service said that six fire engines from Lancaster, Morecambe, Bolton-le-Sands, Carnforth, along with the command support unit from Fulwood, were mobilised to the incident at S&B’s Caton Road site just after 10pm.

“On arrival, firefighters found a commercial building to be well alight and used four breathing apparatus and two hose reel jets to contain the fire.

“Firefighters were at the incident for approximately five hours and extinguished the fire using four breathing apparatus, one thermal imaging camera and two hose reel jets.”

According to local reports, there were no injuries and S&B was open again yesterday. 

The business, established in 1924, has a long heritage in textile printing. Although it still offers traditional rotary textile printing and flatbed screen printing, production is increasingly moving to digital printing using the latest Durst industrial inkjet kit. S&B is also a Durst Centre of Excellence. 

It is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, fabric printers in the UK and won a Queen’s Award for International Trade in 2020.

S&B is part of the £112.2m turnover Sanderson Design Group, along with sister manufacturing wing Anstey Wallpaper Company in Loughborough. The two factories print for Sanderson and for third party clients. 

Sanderson Design Group had not commented on the incident at the time of writing and the extent of any damage was unclear. S&B operates from a large site and the location of the fire was not disclosed.