Five fire crews and three command units attended a fire at a Mercadona dry food Warehouse at around 7pm on Wednesday night on the l’Oliveral industrial estate in Riba-roja del Turia in Valencia.
The fire created a large column of black smoke, visible several kilometres away, the causes of which are still unknown.
Company sources say that the alarm systems “were activated immediately and have worked correctly.” The entire workforce has been evacuated, “so there has been no personal injury to any of the staff,” they explain.
The mayor of Riba-roja, Robert Raga, added that there have been no injuries and the control of the firefighters has been total. In addition, he explained that the smoke that has been unleashed by the virulent fire “is not toxic.
The president of Mercadona, Juan Roig, also attended the outskirts of the burned factory to check the situation along with the mayor.
In the logistics centre there are 14 warehouses, of which four are “dry”. It is one of these units where the outbreak occurred on Wednesday evening. The facility, according to the company, was empty at the time of the fire; It contained only pallets, since the stock had been distributed in the morning.
Mercadona’s logistics network consists of 16 operational logistics blocks, two satellite warehouses and two regulatory warehouses. From there, it supplies the more than 1,600 supermarkets it has both in Spain and Portugal, led by a team of 10,700 staff.
This is the second mayor fire suffered by the company in recent years. In 2018, a spectacular fire also devastated the Mercadona bakery. It started around midnight in an oven and from there spread to the rest of the facilities destroying 30,000 m2 in the Campo Aníbal industrial estate, in the municipality of Puçol.
