Family firm WC Rowe has reopened its pasty factory after a blaze forced it to halt production.

A fire tore through the Cornish baker’s main pasty site on the edge of Falmouth in July, triggered by an electrical fault that resulted in a 72-day closure.

Rowe’s, which produces more than 100 products in its savoury bakery range for customers including Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Booker, Kerry Foods and Spar, set up a temporary pasty production line within six days of the fire at its bread and cakes factory. However, the business could only supply limited volumes and sizes of Rowe’s signature Cornish pasty.

The blaze was “the blackest day in the history of WC Rowe”, said chairman and owner Alan Pearce, who joined as an apprentice in 1967 and inherited the business in 1999 from founders Bill and Phyllis Rowe, who did not have a family of their own. But he said the bakery had got back up and running in “record time.”

CEO Kerry Lynch added the business was excited for the future. “We are picking up where we left off, but the new production site means we can move forward even faster.”

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