Fire Devastates Ybarra's Seville Facility

Almost half of the Seville based Ybarra factory was destroyed in a blaze that broke out Saturday afternoon. The company vowed to rebuild as soon as possible.

Fire consumed nearly half of Ybarra Group's factory in Seville, Spain. Storage areas and olive oil tanks were the hardest hit.
By Alexis Kerner
Jul. 18, 2016 08:47 UTC
2230
Fire consumed nearly half of Ybarra Group's factory in Seville, Spain. Storage areas and olive oil tanks were the hardest hit.

A fire that broke out Saturday after­noon at the cen­tral instal­la­tion of the 175-year-old Ybarra Group in Seville, Spain, has finally been extin­guished. It took around fifty fire­fight­ers and almost two days to extin­guish the blaze com­pletely.

The 90,000-square-meter site is where most olive oil and sauces are man­u­fac­tured and bot­tled. Initial cal­cu­la­tions esti­mate that the fire con­sumed nearly half of Ybarra´s pri­mary fac­tory. Storage areas and olive oil tanks were the hard­est hit.

Officials spec­u­late that the fire began in an out­door area where pal­lets and other flam­ma­ble mate­ri­als were stored. A plas­tic bot­tle most likely cre­ated a mag­ni­fy­ing glass effect where con­di­tions were exac­er­bated by extreme sum­mer heat and winds.

No one was injured dur­ing the fire. However, there was a sig­nif­i­cant loss of highly advanced equip­ment that will need to be replaced.

The com­pany has stated that they are ded­i­cated to rebuild­ing on the same site imme­di­ately and will work to restore their full capac­ity as soon as pos­si­ble. In the interim, they will make use of other instal­la­tions.

Two hun­dred fifty employ­ees were given the next few weeks off and were reas­sured that they would have a place in the com­pany on their return.

The Seville-based com­pany merged in 2009 with another fam­ily com­pany, Migasa, and was at a finan­cial high, earn­ing €212 mil­lion ($2.34 mil­lion) in 2015 and export­ing to 72 coun­tries. These gains had been rein­vested in projects with other large com­pa­nies such as Unilever and Gallina Blanca.

This year marks the 175th anniver­sary of Ybarra. Their long his­tory in Spanish homes is demon­strated in their mayonnaise´s motto, Juntos, de toda la vida, or, together a life­time.



Share this article

Advertisement
Advertisement

Related Articles