Adrian Arias | Valladolid (EFE).- The factory that the Cascajares agri-food company had in Dueñas (Palencia) was reduced to ashes this Thursday after suffering a serious fire. A situation that other companies have gone through before and from which they all recovered two years after the accident.
With 72 direct jobs and around thirty indirect jobs, the Palencia company has already launched a contingency plan to ensure all jobs and a short-term future until it once again has its own facilities.
This is the list of the five most serious fires in companies in the last decade in the Community:
Campofrío (Burgos), 2014
The most remembered fire in the Community is, without a doubt, that of the Campofrío factory in Burgos, when in November 2014 the plant was reduced to ashes due to the bewilderment and concern of its more than 900 employees.
With almost 26 million euros received from the regional government, less than a year after the incident construction began on the new plant, Nueva Bureba, which today is “the flagship of the company in Europe”, with 99,000 meters square and equipped with the latest technologies in automation and Industry 4.0, as its general director, Javier Dueñas, explained to EFE.
As Dueñas narrates, after the devastating fire, they were clear that “the factory had to be built again in the same place, in the shortest possible time and with the same equipment.”
To achieve this, they carried out a reconstruction plan, the ‘Phoenix Project’, in which 17 teams worked for two years, until its inauguration in November 2016.
«At Campofrío we think that crises can also be opportunities. In moments as hard as these, the fundamental thing is not to give in to discouragement, to react quickly and to work together so that the factory can rise from its ashes and is, in addition, more modern and operational than the previous one”, now encourages Cascajares.
Sausages Rodríguez (León), 2016
In the province of León, an important company in the agri-food sector, the meat company Embutidos Rodríguez, also saw how the flames reduced to ash in 2016 its facilities in the town of Soto de la Vega, which then employed almost 400 people.
Two years after the incident, the company inaugurated its new plant and in that first year after its ‘rebirth’ it slaughtered 72,700 tons of pork, which rose to 80,273 in 2019.
As reported to EFE by company sources, turnover in 2022 amounted to 220 million and generated 600 direct jobs.
Iberavi (León), 2016
Also in November of the same year in León, a fire destroyed the egg incubation and chicken production plant that the Iberian Avian Multiplication Company (IBERAVI) had in the Leonese town of Alija del Infantado with 350 direct jobs.
Two years and seven million after the disaster, the company reopened in 2018 the plant that had been reduced to rubble.
The reconstruction allowed the company to renew the facilities with the most advanced technology, which led them to reach 750,000 eggs per week in a fully automated plant.
The reopening also had a positive labor impact with the creation of more than 20 jobs in rural areas.
Ornua (Ávila), 2017
The plant that Ornua has in the Vicolozano industrial estate, some 5 kilometers from Ávila, emerged reinforced from the impact it had on the 120 workers who on November 5, 2017 saw how the flames completely destroyed their facilities and were not extinguished until two weeks later.
Just two years after its destruction, and after an investment of 300 million euros, on November 5, 2019, the new facilities were inaugurated on the same plot where its mother plant was located, turned into a mass of rubble and irons.
Five years after that experience, the general director of Ornua Ingredientes Europe, Joan Bombardó, has reminded EFE how “complicated” that moment was, although the company, together with the workers and institutional aid, has managed to “get ahead”. and “strengthened.”
So much so that the workforce of the factory in Ávila has gone from the 120 employees in 2017 to 180 today.
Cobadu (Zamora), 2020
The fire in the largest cooperative in Castilla y León, Cobadu, which is dedicated to the manufacture of feed and the marketing of agricultural and livestock products, completely carbonized six warehouses in September 2020 and partially affected another of the thirty warehouses in its production facilities. Moral of Wine (Zamora).
Fortunately, the fire, which burned cereals, alfalfa and fertilizers, did not reach the feed manufacturing area and this meant that just over two years later, only two of the warehouses used to store fertilizers remain to be rebuilt.
The cooperative has already received insurance compensation and has even emerged “strengthened”, as they tell EFE, from that event and from the crises it has experienced in the last two years as a result of the covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine , as evidenced by the record turnover of 2022, of about 500 million euros, compared to 398 million in 2021, 348 in 2020 and 345 in 2019.EFE
