"No employees were injured following the explosion of a furnace"

How companies respond to incidents publicly reverberates through their company. There are two extremes: either the company tells the public on what had occurred or they refuse to acknowledge an incident had happened. We have found that when companies acknowledge publicly an incident their employees understand that their employers values safety. Some will say that employees don’t care if their company’s publically acknowledge incidents. We would counter that employees do care. Here is a recent incident that a company publicly acknowledge an incident where many companies would not. We are publishing this incident not to demean the aluminium company but to congratulate this company on acknowledging an incident where many would not.

An explosion at Norsk Hydro's Henderson, Kentucky, secondary aluminum extrusion billet plant halted operations in January 2019 while the company assesses damage. No employees were injured following the explosion of a furnace used to melt aluminum scrap, but the company said it is unsure "how many weeks" the plant will remain down. The incident damaged the furnace.

Hydro produces secondary billet at several other US facilities and expects the short term impact to customers to be "very limited."

The Henderson plant is able to cast as much as 90,000 t/yr of secondary aluminum products, using both industrial and post-consumer scrap as feedstocks. It supplies mostly the midwest US market.

First we are glad no one was injured in this incident. As we have seen many times in the past an explosion in a furnace can easily result in injuries and fatalities. We hope that the plant was able to get back to normal in short order.

Next we commend Hydro for publically releasing this incident. We acknowledge they did not have to tell anyone outside of their company of this incident. But, because they did our industry is safer. How can that be? Norsk Hydro is a company in any industry would want to us as a benchmark in terms of safety. What leaders in our industry such Norsk Hydro reverberate throughout our industry. It truly does.

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