Italian dairy factory owner dies, crushed by 25,000 wheels of cheese

Giacomo Chiapparini was buried under the cheeses when a shelf broke in his warehouse, creating a domino effect which brought down thousands of wheels

The wheels of Grana Padano, a hard cheese that resembles Parmesan, weigh roughly 40 kilograms (88 pounds) each

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A warehouse of cheese. An Italian man died after a warehouse shelf collapsed, causing an avalanche of cheese wheels to bury him. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 10:22pm, 8 Aug 2023Updated: 10:50pm, 8 Aug 2023

The owner of a dairy factory near Bergamo in northern Italy has died after shelves carrying thousands of wheels of cheese collapsed and buried him.

All night, rescuers tried to save the man from under the masses of hard Grana Padano cheese, each wheel weighing 40 kilograms (88 pounds).

Giacomo Chiapparini, 74, was buried under the cheeses when a shelf broke in his warehouse creating a domino effect which brought down the cheeses, firefighter Antonio Dusi said.

Rescuers “had to move the cheeses and the shelves by hand”, Dusi said, adding that it “took about 12 hours” to finally find Chiapparini.

The man was working on Sunday evening in the warehouse of his dairy factory in the small town not far from Milan when one of the metal shelves on which the large cheese wheels were ripening collapsed.

Quickly, the high shelves, reaching to the ceiling and stacked to the brim with cheese, fell one after the other until they buried the man, said the spokesman.