Tristram Marine vows to rebuild

A Hamilton family-owned boat building company is vowing it is "business as usual" despite yesterday's devastating fire at Te Rapa's Tristram Marine.

Despite being shocked and shaken by the news of the fire, Tristram Marine owner Lance Fink said loyal staff were back on deck today trying to work under "unfortunate circumstances".

Mr Fink, who was at the Auckland International Boat Show when he heard the news, said he just went "numb".

But less than 24 hours on he was already planning to get the company back on track as soon as possible.

"The company's positive in its reaction. We are going to be rebuilding."

About 90 per cent of the staff turned up to the site yesterday within an hour of hearing the news to see how they could help.

Lance's brother Andrew Fink, who works closely with the company, said the reaction of staff was "pretty heartening".

"It's a very united company. It's basically a family. Everyone pulls together."

The spectacular fire was Waikato's biggest since the Icepak disaster almost two years ago.

Thick dark smoke, visible from around the city, billowed hundreds of metres into the air from Udy Pl, off The Boulevard, north of the Harvey Norman store, shortly after 3pm.

Twelve appliances and about 60 firefighters from around the Waikato took 90 minutes to bring the blaze under control.

Mr Fink paid tribute to neighbouring businesses who raised the alarm.

The fire wiped out the laminating area of the plant, but due to a fire wall the other area in the plant and showroom displaying about 25 boats was untouched. The showroom was to open again today.

The 95m x 75m building contained a fibreglassing unit with its resins, glues and liquid chemicals contributing to the smoke which blew east across adjacent State Highway 1.

That caused a traffic backlog and encouraged hundreds of rubber-neckers to watch the drama unfold.

While many partially built boats were destroyed, Waikato District Fire Commander Roy Breeze estimated millions of merchandise in the front section of the building was saved.

"It will take time to work out how it started," Mr Breeze said. "It is now a matter of establishing what hazardous substances were in the building and the possible impact of any run-off."

They met on site this morning to ascertain whether it was safe enough to enter the building and start their investigations into what caused the fire.

Mr Breeze described the fire as "a fourth alarm", one level below the fifth alarm Icepak fire.

He said they had to draw on all their resources from around the district for the blaze, including their volunteer brigades.

However, they were able to get them on site pretty quickly.

Mr Breeze said unlike Tamahere, they had a fair idea of the type of substances that would be inside the building.

"The difficulty had more to do with the size of the building. We knew it was a boat builders, so we knew it would have boat building materials. It causes a slightly more fierce fire, but it's not more dangerous than any other fire."

TRISTRAM MARINE

Established in 1987 by Hamilton couple Lance and Bronwyn Fink.Employs about 30 staff.The company doubled its Udy Pl, Te Rapa, manufacturing plant in 2003 to 4180sq m making it one of the most modern boat manufacturing premises in Australasia. Previously named in the Deloitte Fast 50, which tracks the fastest growing companies in New Zealand. The company had 61 per cent growth in 2001.A former Waikato Business of the Year award winner.

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