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A Christchurch pizza company that lost its factory in a massive fire Tuesday morning is “in limbo” and still does not know the fate of its 120 employees.
Romano’s Food Group’s factory, which makes pizza and supermarket brand bases, in the Hillsborough suburb was completely destroyed after a fire broke out around 1.15 a.m. Tuesday.
Operations manager Adele Campbell said they did not yet know what would happen to their staff or if they would move to a new site or rebuild.
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“We are in limbo right now,” he said.
“We haven’t even talked about [staff] yet.”
Things
The fire sent plumes of toxic black smoke through parts of the city, prompting a health advisory from the Canterbury District Board of Health.
The company has a meeting scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
“We are just absorbing it all right now. We will fix it in the next few days. “
Before it was destroyed, Campbell said the factory could produce more than 30,000 pizzas a day for supermarkets across New Zealand.
The massive fire that swept through the factory is not considered suspicious, but the cause is still under investigation.
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At the peak of the fire, 50 firefighters struggled to control it. It sent plumes of toxic black smoke through parts of the city, prompting a health advisory from the Canterbury District Board of Health.
Fire investigator Darren Aitken said Wednesday that he was targeting one part of the factory.
JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON / Stuff
Romano’s Food Group’s factory was completely destroyed in Tuesday’s fire.
“We don’t have a definite cause yet,” he said.
“We don’t consider it suspicious.”
Data from alarms, electrical and security systems will be analyzed as part of the investigation.
JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON / Stuff
Crews clean parts of the factory Wednesday.
Woolston Station Officer Nick Brown said the factory collapsed in the fire because the walls were made of aluminum and polystyrene.
“The polystyrene melts and the resistance is gone,” he said.
The building’s collapse made access to hot spots difficult, Brown said.
JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON / Stuff
Collapsed remains of the Romano Pizza Factory in Hillsborough.
A team of Woolston firefighters was sent back to the site around 10 p.m. Tuesday night after an outbreak. It was extinguished within an hour, said New Zealand Fire and Emergency spokeswoman Lyn Crosson.
Parts of the building continued to smoke until late Wednesday morning.
Firefighters were also helping the company recover files from an office that had escaped the worst of the fire.
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The fire swept through Romano’s Food Group’s pizza factory, leaving workers with an uncertain future.
Southern Demolition was on site with machinery to clean parts of the building. They had already demolished part of the building early Wednesday morning.
WorkSafe had not been notified of the fire, a WorkSafe spokeswoman said Wednesday.
Romano’s Food Group Limited started in 1975 in Christchurch as a fine pastry manufacturer under the name Maxwell’s Pastry. The group’s first location was a small store on Ferry Rd in Woolston.
In the early 1980s, Maxwell’s Pastry bought Romano’s Pizzas and began producing fresh pizza for the South Island, later expanding to the North Island.
The family business has grown into one of New Zealand’s leading manufacturers of pizzas, bases and supermarket brand bases.
