It is with deep regret that AN Paints has to announce that three members of our production team sadly died during a fire at the xxxxxx Factory in the early hours of this morning. We would like to send our heartfelt condolences to their families, colleagues and friends.All other personnel – including visiting contractors – were safely evacuated and have been accounted for. We would like to express our gratitude to the local emergency services who were quickly on the scene. The fire was extinguished at 5.30am and the factory has been made safe. We would like to stress that there is no danger to the public from any of the non-hazardous materials stored on site.However if anyone has any concerns at all we would urge them to contact our Helpline which is open 24 hours a day: 0207 334 107.AN’s xxxxx factory has one of the best health and safety records in the country, and at this stage it is unclear how the fire started. The cause of the fire is being investigated by the fire authorities and by the Health & Safety Executive, and we are conducting our own urgent internal investigation as well. We are as concerned as everyone else to find out how such an incident could occur and will do everything in our power to assist the authorities in their inquiries, so that we make sure nothing like this happens again.We will keep you fully informed as to further developments. Production will only be resumed once we believe it is totally safe to do so, but it is expected that work at xxxxx will be able to restart in the next few days.