South Africa’s privately owned Samancor Chrome, the world’s second-biggest producer of ferrochrome, said on Friday it had shut a furnace at its plant after a worker was killed in an explosion on Sunday.
Sunel Pretorius, a spokesperson at Samancor, said she could not yet say how much output had been affected by the closure of the furnace, and could not confirm whether a force majeure on shipments from the plant had been imposed.
”We had an explosion on Sunday afternoon and there was one fatality. There is an investigation going on; the furnace is not in production until investigations are completed,” Pretorius said.
”I have not been notified if we have declared a force majeure,” she added.
Samancor, which is owned by the Kermas Group, has 15 furnaces and produces more than one million tonnes of the metal in South Africa, which is the world’s top producer of the metal, supplying more than 50% of worldwide charge chrome.
The firm produces three grades of ferrochrome — charge chrome, intermediate carbon ferrochrome and low-carbon ferrochrome, for use in the process of stainless steel smelting.
Samancor runs five ferrochrome plants and two chrome-ore mining complexes in different parts of South Africa. — Reuters