PP O’Connor takes down Fiddlers Ferry cooling towers

Demolition specialist PP O’Connor has taken down four cooling towers at the Fiddlers Ferry Power Station in Cheshire, United Kingdom.

The 110-metre-high structures were brought down via an implosive event that took place yesterday, Sunday 3 December.  

Weighing approximately 10,000 tonnes each, the towers were taken down using more than 200kg of explosives, which were placed within 12,000 holes drilled throughout the structures.

The explosives were detonated across each cooling tower 500 milliseconds apart, creating 40,000 tonnes of debris within seconds. The concrete arisings from the blow down will be processed and recycled on the site for future development.

Charmaine O’Connor, CEO at P.P. O’Connor, said: “We are proud to have been responsible for such a prestigious demolition project which will unlock a new era for this large brownfield site.

“The project brought together a great team, who worked together with all the stakeholders to ensure the successful delivery of this phase of the development.

“Removal of these cooling towers has created a new landscape for the area and we’re excited about the future masterplans of the scheme.”

Fiddlers Ferry Power Station, which was decommissioned in 2020 in line with the UK Government’s phasing out of coal-fired energy generation plants, is currently owned by natural resources and energy company Peel NRE.

The 820-acre Fiddlers Ferry site is being cleared for redevelopment as part of a long-term, mixed-use regeneration scheme to boost the region’s economy, with 1,700 new homes and the creation of over 100 acres of commercial and industrial land.

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