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Fire guts Biyagama factory
By Mahangu Weerasinghe
A fire swept through the Richard Peiris Natural Foams Ltd. factory in the the Biyagama Free Trade Zone yesterday from around five thirty in the evening. The stores, which housed close to two hundred million rupees worth of export quality rubber mattresses, were completely destroyed along with the production unit of the factory.

"The fire had apparently started when sparks from a welding plant had fallen on the foam mattresses," said Damitha Dharmasena, CEO of Richard Peiris Export Group, the company which runs the factory. "From what we know so far, there is no loss of life," he said. "The factory however is a complete write-off, there is nothing to be salvaged here," he explained.

Karunaratne Ramanayake, the Security Officer on duty at the complex said only the maintenance crew comprising around thirty had been on duty yesterday since it was an off day. Mr. Dharmasena too confirmed this fact. "If it was a production day we would have had close to two hundred people working in the complex," he said.
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