The Derrinlough briquette factory was a

briquette A briquette (; also spelled briquet) is a compressed block of coal dust or other combustible biomass material (e.g. charcoal, sawdust, wood chips, peat, or paper) used for fuel and kindling to start a combustion, fire. The term is a diminutive der ...

manufacturing facility in

County Offaly County Offaly (; ) is a Counties of Ireland, county in Republic of Ireland, Ireland. It is part of the Eastern and Midland Region and the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster. It is named after the Ancient Ireland, ancient Kingdom of Uí ...

, Ireland, opened in 1957. It ceased production on 26 May 2023.

History

The factory was constructed by

Bord Na Mona Cucerdea (, Hungarian pronunciation: ) is a commune in Mureș County, Transylvania, Romania. It is composed of three villages: Bord (''Bord''), Cucerdea, and Șeulia de Mureș (''Oláhsályi''). The commune is located in the southwestern part of ...

from 1957 to 1959, near Birr in County

Offaly County Offaly (; ) is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Eastern and Midland Region and the province of Leinster. It is named after the ancient Kingdom of Uí Failghe. It was formerly known as King's County, in honour of Philip II of Spain ...

. Production started in 1959 and it was officially opened in 1960. Part of the cost was financed by a £500,000 loan from Guinness in addition to other borrowings. The original briquette factory in Lullymore was unable to meet market demands by the 1950s as it could only produce about 40000 tonnes per annum even after modifications. Plans were advanced for two new factories, one located in the Derrygreenagh group of bogs in east Offaly and a second in the Boora group in west Offaly. Construction of Derrinlough started in 1957, with Croghan starting soon after. Derrinlough began production in late 1959 with its official opening in 1960. The Derrinlough facility has a design capacity of 135000 tonnes per annum. It is the last peat briquette factory in operation in Ireland (Lullymore closed in 1991, and Croghan in 2000, while the newest factory, in Littleton, closed in 2018). Production of peat briquettes is due to finish in Derrinlough in 2024 but due to poor quality raw material stocks and issues with plant reliability, the closure was brought forward to June 2023. The briquette factory was scheduled to close in 2024, in line with Bord Na Mona's "Brown to Green" strategy. The Board has started construction on a 21 turbine 127 MW wind farm in early 2022. There are some other proposals for the reuse of the factory site but no plans are at an advanced stage at the time of the plant's final shutdown. The Board and

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

signed an agreement in 2024 to develop

data center A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...

s in the area.

References

{{coord, 53.1841, -7.8767, type:landmark_region:IE, display=title Manufacturing in Ireland Peat mining Buildings and structures in County Offaly Buildings and structures completed in 1959 1960 establishments in Ireland 2023 disestablishments in Ireland