All night, rescue workers in Bergamo tried to save the man, who was over 70 years old, from under the masses of hard Grana Padano cheese, each wheel weighing 40 kilograms.

But all help came too late for the cheesemaker who was confirmed dead, a spokesman for the Bergamo fire brigade said on Monday morning after a 12-hour operation.

The man was working on Sunday evening in the warehouse of his dairy factory in the small town not far from Milan when one of the metal shelves on which the large cheese wheels were ripening collapsed.

This triggered a domino effect.

Quickly, the high shelves, reaching to the ceiling and stacked to the brim with cheese, fell one after the other until they buried the man, said the spokesman.

Firefighters were not able to recover the body until about 9am on Monday morning.

It is not clear how the first metal shelf collapsed, though material fatigue or a technical fault are suspected to be the cause.

The factory reportedly produces around 50 wheels of Grana Padano, adding up to a total of more than 15,000 wheels a year.

-with AAP