16 crews attend fire at AstraZeneca’s £1bn R&D centre on Cambridge Biomedical Campus
Sixteen fire appliances were called to a fire at AstraZeneca’s global R&D centre on Cambridge Biomedical Campus after reports of smoke billowing from the building.
They found the first floor of the £1bn Discovery Centre filled with smoke and located the source of the fire.
After extinguishing it with hose reels and jets, they ventilated the state-of-the building on Francis Crisk Avenue.
Following the incident on the evening of Friday December 23, an AstraZeneca spokesperson told the Cambridge Independent: “There was a small fire that was contained and the damage is currently being assessed. There were no reported injuries.”
The fire service was called to the incident at 7.25pm and the Combined Fire Control mobilised crews from Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Hertfordshire and Essex.
The 16 crews involved came from Cambridge, Littleport, St Neots, March, Manea, Huntingdon, Saffron Walden, Royston, Baldock, Haverhill, Wickhambrook and Newmarket.
A fire service spokesperson said: “Firefighters checked for hotspots and further spread, before the incident began scaling down at around 12.40am. Firefighters reinspected the building at 7am.”
They reinspected the building later on Christmas Eve, and a fire investigation confirmed the cause was accidental.
The Discovery Centre was officially opened by the then Prince Charles on November 23, 2021.
It can accommodate 2,200 research scientists and features the most advanced robotics, high-throughput screening and AI-driven technology available for drug discovery.
The building has 19,000 square metres of lab space contained in a disc-like structure that is considered a triumph of environmental engineering, with 174 boreholes providing natural geothermal energy, four ‘hybrid cooling towers’ and a ground source heat pump that will save enough energy to power 2,500 homes, in line with the biopharmaceutical company’s zero carbon programme.
Low-energy ventilation and high levels of insulation aid the building’s efficiency, while its saw-tooth roof design is intended to reduce energy use by flooding the interior with daylight.
