Fire fighters were called to a suspected arson at a meat processing facility owned by UK chilled meat producer Parkam Food Group at the weekend.
The blaze, which began in the early hours of Saturday morning (18 December), encompassed nearly half of the 40m by 40m facility and required ten fire engines at the scene.
A spokesperson for West Yorkshire Fire Service told just-food that the building was left “badly damaged” and that police will now undertake an investigation into the incident. There were no casualties reported.
“We were called at 02:26 and there were ten fire engines in total,” the spokesperson said. “We had to use two ground monitors because it was quite a sizeable fire. About 50% of the building was consumed in the fire.”
He added: “It was very badly damaged and also there might now be some contaminated food stuffs as a result, but obviously I can’t speak about that. The police cordoned off the scene as we were dampening down because they wanted to treat it as a potential crime scene, so obviously our fire investigators will work hand-in-hand with the police on that.”
The spokesperson said the weather was “bad” but that the services was “well equipped” to deal with the conditions.
Privately-owned Parkam Foods manufactures cooked meat, sandwich and sandwich filler products for the retail, wholesale and foodservice sectors. The firm acquired UK sandwich maker Freshway Foods last year.
