PT Gunbuster Nickel Industri (GNI) confirmed a fire incident occurred at its ferronickel smelter in Morowali Utara, Central Sulawesi Province, Thursday afternoon but there were no victims.
Head of Corporate Communication of GNI Mellysa Tanoyo said the incident began when workers were carrying out repair and maintenance work at the smelter.
“It is true that yesterday there was an incident at GNI. It was a welding spark that caught fire and became a fire during maintenance repair work," she told CNBC Indonesia on Friday.
However, Mellysa said that the firefighters swiftly extinguished the fire in a short time and evacuated people around the incident area, and there were no victims of this incident.
The company is currently investigating the exact cause. However, if things are found that do not comply with procedures, the company will take firm action, she said.
Read also: Tsingshan’s smelter exploded, 12 workers killed
Mellysa urged people not to disseminate biased information on social media that could only cause panic.
On Sunday, an explosion of a smelter furnace owned by PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel (ITSS) at the Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park (IMIP), Central Sulawesi, killed 18 workers and injured dozens of others. ITSS is a local subsidiary of China’s stainless steel giant Tsingshan.
GNI, which is a local subsidiary of China’s Jiangsu Delong Nickel Industry, operates a ferronickel RKEF smelter with four production lines with a combined output capacity of 1.8 million tons per annum. It was inaugurated by President Joko Widodo in December of 2021. The company said at the time it planned to expand the RKEF lines to six, 10 and then 24 in the following years.
On June 26 of this year, a fire incident at the GNI smelter killed one worker and injured several others. On 22 December 2022, an explosion reportedly occurred at GNI’s smelter, killing two workers. In January of this year, a workers demonstration turned ugly, killing two workers.
Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak
