"A fire is raging at a factory...."

Every manufacturing plant has combustible materials in some shape or form on its premises. Our industry is unique in such that some of our plants generate waste that is also combustible. From aluminium fines, shavings, dust, and dross our plants have additional hazards that have to be considered. Further adding to the difficult some of our plants have hot equipment (extrusion presses) or even furnaces with molten metal. Acknowledging where your combustible materials are in your factory is the first step in prevent a potential fire. Here is a recent story:

A fire is raging at a factory near in the United Kingdom after plastic containers caught alight.

The local Fire and Rescue Service were called to the fire at the aluminium plant early one afternoon during the week of September 24, 2017.

A spokeswoman for the fire service confirmed the fire started with some plastic containers burning on the site. She said: "We have got two appliances there, one from (a fire department in the North) and one from (from a fire department in the East).

The aluminium plant offers surface finishing and mechanical fabrication solutions for the car industry.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog could not confirm that there were no injuries so we chose not to name the company nor location. Regardless, we hope the damage caused by the fire was minimal and that production was not affected. As always we pray that no one was injured in this and every incident.

We acknowledge that with the limited information in the news media article it is nearly impossible to determine how this fire started. Regardless, in our experience fires such as this can occur when poor housekeeping is performed in an aluminum plant.

The Aluminium Times had an article about the importance of good housekeeping:

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