Around 1300 tonnes of seafood may have to be destroyed after a fire at a cold store in Timaru yesterday.
The fire broke out at Sanford Ltd's cold store at North Mole at 4pm yesterday. No employees were on site and the alarm was raised by a watchman.
Managing director Eric Barratt said an inspection this morning revealed major damage to the environmental load-out area and the front of the cold store.
"While Sanford is fully insured for any damage to both plant and product we will be doing a full assessment on the 1300 metric tonnes of frozen product to determine whether there can be any recovery."
Mr Barratt said Sanford's fish processing plant was on a separate site and was not affected, and there would be no impact on jobs.
"Until the cool store is back up and running we will use other Sanford and external facilities in the area," he said.
"We have received a number of offers of assistance from other seafood and cold store companies and we will be accepting some of those offers. At times like this it is pleasing to receive these unsolicited offers of assistance."
Investigations had begun into the cause of the fire but it appeared to have started in an electrical switchboard, Mr Barratt said.
He thanked the Timaru Fire Service for their work to quickly bring the fire under control.
