The Hereford-based drinks firm and Nalco Limited were also ordered to pay more than £50,000 each in costs after two people died and 26 fell ill in the city in 2003.

Passing sentence yesterday at Hereford Crown Court, Judge Alistair McCreath said the failure to clean two cooling towers was “woefully inadequate” and “almost beyond belief”.

Judge McCreath said: “The fines which I will impose today are not, nor could they ever be, any measure of the value of the two lives lost, nor of the grief of those who mourn them.”

Bulmer and Cheshire firm Nalco pleaded guilty last year.