This morning a fire broke out at a scrubber installation (gas cleaning unit) in Umicore’s Precious Metals Refining operations in Hoboken, Belgium. The local fire department attended immediately on site and the impacted installation, adjacent services andresidents in the immediate vicinity were evacuated as a matter of precaution. Nobody was hurt.
In the meanwhile the fire has been extinguished and the residents have been able to return to their homes again, Umicore says. While the scrubber installation remains shut down, activity is continuing in the other departments. The local fire brigade provided support with measuring teams in order to determine the nature of the emitted gases, which revealed no abnormal values.
According to Umicore a thorough investigation has been initiated to identify the cause of the incident. The impact of the incident is being evaluated at the moment.
