Materials and recycling firm Umicore’s lead refinery plant in Hoboken, Belgium, has been shut down after a fire on 2 March— the third such incident at the plant within 30 months.
An investigation has been initiated to identify the cause of the fire, which began at 18:30 CET when the plant was closed for maintenance.
A Umicore statement read that while it was too soon to assess the scale of the damage to the impacted installation, the rest of the Hoboken plant remained in operation.
Umicore expects the incident will not impact the throughput of precious metals and that it will be able to fulfil all its contractual commitments.
Marc Grynberg, CEO Umicore: “We regret this new incident and understand that this creates uncertainty for our neighbours in Hoboken. We will do everything we can to minimise the impact on the local residents and the environment. Safe operations remain our top priority and we will take all necessary steps to prevent such incidents in the future.”
The fire brigade of Antwerp extinguished the fire and nobody was hurt. As a precautionary measure, residents in the area were asked to close their windows and doors in case of smoke nuisance.
Emission measurements are being carried out at Umicore’s fixed measurement points and via mobile measurement teams.
Back in July 2019, a peripheral installation of the smelter at caught fire due to an electrical malfunction of the motor powering the conveyor belt that feeds the smelter.
The belt and its casing have been destroyed and need to be replaced. The smelter furnace and the other critical production installations on the site are fully intact.
In 2018, a fire broke out at a scrubber installation (gas cleaning unit) in the plant’s Precious Metals Refining operations.
