Kottayam | A day after a major fire broke out at Kerala Paper Products Limited (KPPL), a state government-owned public sector undertaking, a special team was appointed on Friday to investigate the cause of the blaze.

Kottayam District Collector V Vigneshwari appointed an investigating team headed by Pala RDO P G Rajendra Babu to investigate the fire, and sought a report on it by October 30.

The district fire officer, deputy superintendent of police of Vaikom, factories and boilers inspector and deputy chief engineer of Pala KSEB are also part of the team.

A major fire broke out at around 5.45 PM on Thursday which damaged the paper plant machine here.

Even though the employees used multiple fire hydrants, the fire spread uncontrollably, police said, adding that operations were halted and a case was registered.

Fire Force units from nearby areas including Vaikom, Kaduthuruthy and Piravom were pressed into service to control the fire.

It took four hours to control the fire after which they poured water continuously for over two hours to cool down the machines.

The erstwhile Hindustan Newsprint Limited (HNL), which had been defunct since June 2019, was taken over by the Kerala government last year and re-christened as Kerala Paper Products Limited.

The manufacturing of newsprint at KPPL was started as part of a restructuring of the 700-acre plant which was earlier a central public sector undertaking.

When the union government decided to privatise HNL after it was shut down citing financial loss, the Left government in Kerala constituted KPPL to take over.