Destroyed Għaxaq scrapyard has history of sanctioned illegalities, owned by major government contractor

The scrapyard fire in Tal-Barrani road on Wednesday, which was extinguished after a massive 16-hour operation coordinated by the Civil Protection Department (CPD), occurred in a site with a history of sanctioned illegalities, The Shift can confirm.

Situated right on the border between Għaxaq and Żejtun, planning permits linked to the scrapyard list Trihills Heavy Industries Ltd, a subsidiary of the family-owned Trihills Group. The shareholders are Joseph, Dolores, and Glen Cassar.

Much like other industrial developments in an area known for planning illegalities, the site was first formalised through the illegal construction of storage units way back in 1997.

By 2006, it had come under the ownership of the Cassar family, who successfully managed to sanction the scrapyard and ancilliary buildings years later in 2017.

By the following year, the site had become a fully fledged industrial operation, with the owners of the site also exploring the possibility of developing the plot across the street from them into a retail centre.

In its public notice update earlier this morning, the CPD confirmed that the 16-hour operation involved 97 firefighters and 12 senior fire officers, consuming 1.2 million litres of water in the process.

As of publication time, there is no information available about what caused the fire and how it could have evolved into such a massive blaze.

Besides owning the subsidiary company that runs the burnt out scrapyard, Trihills Group also has significant holdings in the construction and property sectors.

Its construction subsidiary in particular has been on a hot streak of public procurement contracts since 2022, earning at least €2.9 million from just 12 tenders.

As can be seen from the data outlined above, Infrastructure Malta alone paid Trihills €1.3 million for the supply of various types of signage, thermoplastic road markings, anti-skid material, and vehicle restraint systems.

The rest of Trihills’ government contracting footprint revolves around major landscaping works and the supply of other types of construction material.

In effect, its business model is relatively similar to other major contractors located on Għaxaq’s “concrete belt”, a stretch of mostly illegal batching plants and other ancilliary operations that has been allowed to proliferate with little to no enforcement action being taken.