– It is serious. There are great values that were lost, says managing director of Bakehuset, Øystein Halvorsen. On Friday last week, the power went out at the bakery in Brumunddal. There were close to seven tonnes of baker’s wares in the oven or in the roasting area. About four tonnes of it was sausage and hamburger buns. In addition, a lot of bread and buns were also thrown. The bakery was without power for around two hours, but it took almost five hours before the bakery was up and running again at full capacity. Back then, the back robbers were what the managing director calls wreckage. Could have lost several hundred thousand How much the power outage cost the bakery, he hasn’t calculated yet. He thinks the sum will be large. – Economically, it is serious. It is probably a couple of hundred thousand kroner that we are talking about, although we do not have the concrete figure for that yet, says Halvorsen. They managed to pack back what was lost, so that the shop shelves were not empty the next day. But, it costs. The bakery lost both food and money in the power outage. Photo: Lars Erik Skrefsrud / news – We had to use 4-5 extra production hours. It is costly. We had to use new raw materials that have great value, it goes with more energy, we also have people we have to pay overtime to get the production in place, says Halvorsen. In addition, they had to have support production from the bakery in Oslo to fill the shop shelves. Bakehuset supplies goods to stores in the Norgesgruppen, such as Kiwi, Spar, Meny and Joker. In addition, the bakery in Brumunddal accounts for large parts of the production of hamburger bread and sausage bread. Bakehuset is Norway’s largest bakery with 11 local bakeries covering large parts of Norway. Bakehuset is owned by Norgesgruppen and makes baked goods for other Kiwi, Meny and Joker. – Sad that food is thrown away – It is sad that so many tonnes end up as food waste, says Mette Nygård Havre, leader of the people’s movement “Eat up the food”. Bread and baked goods are among the things that households throw away the most. She thinks it is strange that such a large bakery does not have some emergency solutions in the event of a power cut when it has such major consequences. MAJOR CONSEQUENCES: Mette Nygård Havre, leader of the people’s movement Eat up the food, it seems strange that the bakery does not have some emergency solutions when a relatively short dam break has such big consequences. Photo: Spisoppmaten – I have never heard of anything like this, but I hope that it is not common for a shutdown like this to lead to a lot of food being thrown away where food is produced, she says. She understands that the baked goods were no longer suitable for human consumption, and that they end up as pig food. – Nevertheless, it is considered food waste when it is used as animal feed, and we want as little of it as possible, she says. There is no emergency solution The power outage is due to a cable fault which caused 1,415 people to be without power in Brumunddal on Friday. – There was a technical error on the line, but we reconnected and everyone had the power back after just over two hours, says Cecilie Gregersen, communications advisor in Elvia. Halvorsen cannot think that something similar has happened unexpectedly in that way before. – It happens that the e-verket or the municipality takes the power, but then we are notified about it and can plan production accordingly. This was something that happened urgently, he says. – Don’t they have some emergency solutions if the power goes out? – No, we don’t have that. These buildings require so much energy that we do not have a rig with a generator to drive in if the power goes out. Then we are a bit of a checkmate, he says. Becomes pig feed – The food was scrap that we cannot send out to shops and consumers, says Halvorsen. He emphasizes that they try their best not to throw away food. The seven tons of baked goods that were wrecked will feed stomachs, but not people. – This went into feed production for pigs, he says. – It’s not good, but it’s a perfectly fine solution once things are as they are. This is how we handle all waste in bread. We collect returns from stores every single day that are not sold. We take that back, it also goes into feed production for pigs. In an environmental wheel, it is good that we get it done, rather than it being thrown away, says Halvorsen.
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Bakehuset’s bakery in Brumunddal had to throw away nearly seven tonnes of food after a power outage – news Innlandet – Local news, TV and radio
