A fierce blaze that caused £75,000 damage to a company’s headquarters was just one of a spate of arson attacks, detectives have revealed.

Fire ripped through part of a single-storey factory in Dockfield Road, Shipley, and police fear the blaze could put the building’s occupier, PFF Presentation Products, out of business.

Fearing the spate of fires could continue, police swiftly arrested four people, all from Baildon, on suspicion of arson.

Three of the suspects, aged 17, 19 and 35, have been released on bail pending further inquiries. The fourth, a 14-year-old boy, has been released without charge.

Detective Inspector Peter Craig, of Keighley CID, said: “It became apparent that the factory fire was just one of a series of fires that had occurred in this area over the last few days.

“In that evening alone, the fire brigade had been to four separate fires in the area involving skips and commercial waste bins. Further inquiries revealed there had been a number of other premises where unreported arson attacks had taken place over the last few days.

“As a result of that, we received some information about who was responsible and took pre-emptive action to arrest these individuals swiftly in anticipation that further fires would occur.”

Det Insp Craig said PFF could potentially go out of business because of the blaze.

More than 50 firefighters were needed to tackle the factory inferno, which broke out when a pallet fire spread to the business.

Business owner Craig Knott said people had been working inside the building when the fire started just before 7am on Saturday.

Mr Knott, who had owned the business for two years, said: “There were people actually working in the building. They were being put at risk in what can only be assumed to be arson.

“The worrying thing is that somebody set the pallets on fire while people were working in there.”

Crews from Shipley, Idle, Bradford, Fairweather Green, Bingley and Rawdon attended the incident.

A command unit from Cleckheaton was set up at the scene as well as an aerial appliance from Bradford.

Station manager Chris Clarke, in charge of the fire investigation, said: “When we arrived it would appear that the fire had spread to the building from the pallets, before we got here.

“The original fire, or where we think the fire started, is right at the back of the building and just over-looked by the river, so there’s nobody who overlooks that area. So the fire had probably been burning for some time before we had been made aware of it.”

Station manager Clarke said the fire service had been made aware of several small skip or rubbish fires in the area in the hours leading up to the incident.

Detectives were planning to look through CCTV footage from the surrounding area today in a search for further evidence.