Food warehouse 'looks like dump'

DOMINO EFFECT: Millions of dollars worth of stock is believed to have been lost in this collapse of shelving and stacked goods in a Foodstuffs warehouse in Hornby on the western edge of Christchurch.

Supermarket distribution centres were hit hard in Saturday's quakes, with tens of millions of dollars worth of alcohol and food destroyed.

A worker at Foodstuffs' distribution centre in Hornby said up to $90 million worth of alcohol products had been smashed there.

"The racks collapsed like dominoes," he said. "It just looks like the dump."

Twenty-five aisles, 100-metres long and six-metres high, lost their contents on to the floor, with the debris as high as a three-storey house, he said.

Foodstuffs South Island chief executive Steven Anderson said workers at the Hornby warehouse could have been killed when the racks holding hundreds of tonnes of groceries collapsed.

"We were very lucky not to lose someone as there were very few people there at the time."

Huge amounts of stock was thrown from the shelves in all five of its Pak'n Save and 12 New World Christchurch stores. In some of them the floors were completely covered, but the racks and shelving systems in all but one held up. To his knowledge, none of the heavy pallets of goods stored on top of the racks in its Pak'n Save stores had fallen.

Foodstuffs' Papanui distribution centre also sustained extensive damage.

The centres were running yesterday, but at a reduced capacity, with help from the Palmerston North centre. Mr Anderson said all but the Kaiapoi New World were trading again yesterday. Kaiapoi was badly hit and that store would be shut indefinitely.

Both Foodstuffs and Progressive Enterprises said they were shipping in food from the North Island to supplement the crippled distribution centres.

Progressive Enterprises spokeswoman Penny Newbigin said all Countdown, SuperValue and FreshChoice stores in Canterbury were open, but 40 per cent of the products at its Christchurch distribution centres had been ruined.

In the aftermath of the quake, people flocked to supermarkets, emptying the shelves of bottled water and other survival supplies, including candles and batteries. Petrol stations were also busy.

A spokesman for The Warehouse chain, Paul Walsh, said that racking systems in its nine Christchurch area stores stood up well but a considerable amount of stock did get thrown on to the shop floors.

He said the company never stocked pallets on top of racks in its shops. And when items were stored on shelving above head height it was either loose stock or cartons and if it was heavy, it was kept in place behind mesh screens. "I'm pretty confident that they would not come down easily."

He said the company's first priority had been to get engineers through all its stores to ensure they were safe before letting staff and customers back in.

Distribution Workers Union southern regional secretary Paul Watson said there was a lot of concern that warehouse workers' lives were at risk. But he was also concerned that shop workers and customers could have also been badly hurt with so much stock falling off supermarket shelves in the city.

Graeme Beattie, immediate past president of the Earthquake Engineering Society, who led a study of shop-shelving systems several years ago, said he had not had a chance to see how shop-rack systems performed in Saturday's quake.

Generally warehouse-style shops protected customers by putting cartons behind gates on higher shelves and pallets stored on top of racks were wrapped tightly and locked in place. However, he was concerned that shelving systems now being imported into New Zealand may not be meeting the same standards.