£30,000 Damage When Fire Guts Brewery Bottling Plant

Wanganui Chronicle, 28 June 1948, Page 5

£30,000 Damage When Fire Guts Brewery Bottling Plant

(P.A.) Greymouth. June 26. Damage conservatively estimated at £30,000 was done when fire gutted the central bottling plant and ncad office of the Westland Breweries Ltd. ffi the earlv hours of this morning. The building was chiefly constructed of corrugated iron on a wooden frame, with a concrete front and a concrete floor throughoutWhen the brigade arrived, the whole of the bottling department and the store up to the front offices was ablaze with flames leaping through the roof. The rear portion of lhe building, which contained expensive machinery, including a chilling plan! of the replacement value of about £20,000, was completely burnt out. Damage to the offices was mainfv confined to saturation with water. Included in the stock destroyed was 6000 dozen new bottles. In addition, nearly 4000 dozen bottles of beer were in store but it is expected that possibly up to 50 per cent, of full bottles will be salvaged. At the height of the fire the company’s adjacent bulk beer store and railway workshops at the rear of the bottle store were threatened, but tne work of the brigade was successful in preventing a spread.