Port warehouse fire not to affect sugar prices

The condition of those injured in Thursday’s fire at a sugar warehouse at the Jeddah Islamic Port is stable, Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal was informed by officials during a visit to the accident site yesterday.
The governor witnessed the firefighting operations, which were still continuing yesterday with the help of high-tech firefighting forces from Saudi Aramco as well as 21 Civil Defense teams and three helicopters. The Civil Defense said 85 percent of the fire has been put out.
Sixteen people were injured with varying degrees of burns in the fire that blazed at a 10,000 square meter facility, which stores around 100,000 tons of raw sugar. “The injuries sustained were mostly in the lower body area. Of the injured, three are senior Civil Defense officers, 12 lower ranking officers and one industrial security force officer. The Red Crescent treated some of them at the accident site while more serious cases were transferred to hospital,” a Civil Defense statement said.
With the help of helicopters, two teams of industrial security force and four firefighting teams from Makkah, the blazing area was isolated to avoid the fire from spreading to nearby facilities. Despite this, the fire spread through a conveyor belt used to move raw sugar.
Meanwhile, Director of Makkah Civil Defense Maj. Gen. Jameel Arbaeen urged the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to take necessary steps to prevent any attempt to hike sugar prices in the aftermath of the fire and the resulting shortfall of sugar. He also appealed to the public to report to the ministry any incidence of sugar price manipulation.
The first vice president of the company that owns the warehouse, Muhammad Al-Klaibi, said the company's reserve stock was sufficient to cover the needs of the sugar market for six months. He hoped the company would resume normal operations in a few days.
A company supervisor also said the spoiled sugar would not affect the market supply. “The sugar burned in the fire is only 20 percent of the market volume and so its impact on the market is likely to be minimal. Furthermore, the shortage in the volume of sugar caused by the fire will be replaced by imported sugar at the earliest,” he added.
The official did not deny the poor safety standard and the poor implementation of safety installations at the warehouse, Al-Sharq daily reported yesterday.
“The company started installing an auto fire extinguishing system with water sprayers but it has not yet been completed,” he said, adding that costly installation of an advanced safety system would affect the price of the end product.
According to local newspapers, a 10 kg bag of sugar currently sells at SR 4 higher than the approved price displayed at the Ministry of Commerce’s website.