The Bellambi site houses a warehouse, opportunity shop and the Soft Landing mattress recycling program, which strips old mattresses of recyclable parts such as metal, foam and timber.
The 4,000 square metre warehouse also stores thousands of items of clothing that supply seven Big Heart opportunity shops in the Illawarra and south-western Sydney.
The fire, which began when a stack of mattress frames caught alight around 4.30am on Sunday, triggered the internal fire system. While this helped to extinguish the fire, it also flooded most of the factory.
“Without the internal system we probably would have lost the full factory,” said Mission Australia’s Social Enterprise Operations Manager Bill Dibley.
Given the damage, the warehouse is currently not able to receive donated items.
Mr Dibley estimated that up to 200,000 items of clothing and 1,300 mattresses sustained smoke and water damage, complicating the usual recycling process.
“We’re now working hard to separate the foam that has melted into the springs,” said Mr Dilbey. “And because of the fire the process is taking about three times longer than usual.”
He added that his team spent the whole day on site on Sunday, taking five truckloads of burnt rubbish to the tip and cleaning the building in order to resume normal operations and fulfil contracts.
Police believe the blaze was deliberately lit and are examining CCTV footage captured at the store.
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