Fire Devastates Ybarra's Seville Facility

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 175^th 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.

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