A LEEMING Bar pie company has been ordered to pay thousands of pounds in fines and costs after a blaze which destroyed its factory almost a year ago.

Richmond magistrates were told on Monday that the £2m fire had been caused by a potentially dangerous production process which the Vale of Mowbray firm had been using for 15 years.

The Health and Safety Executive, which prosecuted the company, said it had heated paraffin oil with a flashpoint of 175C in its baking tins to give them a non-stick coating, but a five-year-old oven was operating at 220C when the doors were blown off in August last year.

A day-long fire, fed by a ruptured gas main, swept through the 134-year-old former brewery buildings in Leases Road, calling on the combined efforts of 100 firefighters and 20 engines from all parts of North Yorkshire.

Vale of Mowbray admitted failing to provide a safe system of work for employees and was fined £8,000 and ordered to pay investigation and prosecution costs of £23,112.

Alun Williams, prosecuting for the HSE, said five racks of pie tins containing paraffin oil were being heated up on August 17. The supplier of the oil advised that the maximum safe operating temperature was 175C but the oven was being operated 55C higher.

Mr Williams said that because the oven had been destroyed, it had not been possible to establish the source of the ignition which caused the explosion but investigations revealed that Vale of Mowbray had not conducted a risk assessment on the practice of using the oil.

Graham Hunsley, representing the company, said it was proud of its health and safety record so far and pointed out that no-one had been injured, but after the HSE investigation it accepted that the system had been unsafe.

He said the process involved was a fairly common one in the baking industry and had been used at the factory without incident for 15 years.

The present management had inherited it from the previous factory owners who, it was understood, had undertaken a risk assessment. There was a suggestion, based on a data sheet, that the specification for the oil had been changed to show a flashpoint of about 400C.

Mr Hunsley said the makers of the oven, which at the request of the company was being serviced twice a year instead of once, had been called out several times to rectify problems with it.

Tests by the HSE suggested that a misaligned burner had caused cracks which could have been the source of the ignition leading to the explosion.

If that was the case, said Mr Hunsley, Vale of Mowbray strongly believed that the servicing company should bear some responsibility for what had happened.

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