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Rome: An Italian cheese maker has been crushed to death after thousands of giant wheels of cheese fell on top of him in a warehouse.

Giacomo Chiapparini was checking on a robot that automatically rotates the cheeses to help them mature when a shelf suddenly collapsed.

It caused a domino effect, with other shelves being knocked over and thousands of the heavy cheeses tumbling to the ground, burying the 74-year-old factory owner.

He was working alone and no one saw the freak accident or was able to help him.

A grana padano warehouse in Italy.Credit: Wikimedia/CC

The warehouse, in the small town of Romano di Lombardia near Bergamo, contained about 25,000 wheels of grana padano, a hard cheese that resembles parmigiano reggiano (parmesan).

The cheeses were stacked on shelves that reached up to 10 metres in height. They each weigh about 40 kilograms.

The accident happened on Sunday evening and the alarm was raised by another employee, who heard the sound of the cheese falling.

About 20 firefighters from nearby cities were involved in the search for the missing man, which went on all night.

But as the hours passed, hopes that he had survived beneath the mountain of hard cheese gradually diminished. It was not until Monday morning that firefighters found his body.

Rescuers “had to move the cheeses and the shelves by hand”, Antonio Dusi, a firefighter, said.

It took about 12 hours to finally locate Chiapparini.

“Poor Giacomo was so unlucky,” said Stefano Berni, director general of the grana padano Consortium of producers. “It was a tragic fatality. I cannot remember anything similar, not even during the earthquake [which hit the region in 2012].”

He said Chiapparini typified the hard-working local producers who had made grana padano such a successful brand. His firm had been making grana padano since 2006.

Sebastian Nicoli, the mayor of Romano di Lombardia, said: “It’s a tragedy, a truly terrible death. He was one of the great producers of grana padano in our area and a death like this is a big blow. His business was one of the largest in the region.”

Carabinieri police were investigating the accident and trying to ascertain what caused the shelf to collapse.

Chiapparini’s family business produces grana padano from the milk produced by 900 cows.

“We have been producers of milk forever,” Mary Chiapparini, his daughter, says on the company’s website. “My father Giacomo, the youngest of seven siblings, worked for years with his father and two brothers. In 1977, the farm was divided between the brothers and with his share of 26 cattle, a tractor, an excavator, a shed and a bit of land, his adventure began.”

The Telegraph, London

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