Eighteen workers died after a smelting furnace exploded at a Chinese-owned nickel plant on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island on a Sunday morning, December 24, 2023. Four Chinese and nine Indonesian workers were killed at the scene as they repaired the furnace, Central Sulawesi police chief Agus Nugroho said. Three more died the next day in hospital, and two on Tuesday. Eight of the dead were from China.
The plant belongs to PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel, a unit of PT Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, known as PT IMIP. It sits in the Bahodopi area of Morowali regency.
The furnace was under maintenance and not running, the company said in a statement. Residual slag inside came into contact with flammable items, the furnace walls collapsed and the molten steel slag flowed out. An early investigation pointed to a flammable liquid that ignited and set off nearby oxygen tanks. Nugroho said the blast demolished the furnace and damaged parts of the building’s side walls. Rescuers needed nearly four hours to put out the fire and get the workers out.
About 44 people were still being treated on Tuesday, at a hospital and the company’s clinic, for injuries from serious to minor. Eleven were Chinese nationals. A worker at the complex told AFP that the victims’ faces “were burnt” and their “clothes were all burnt”. The company said it would pay for the injured workers’ treatment.
Plant shut, inquiry open
Police ordered the plant to stop work until the investigation is finished. “We have ordered PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel to stop its operation until our entire investigation is completed,” Nugroho said. A team is checking whether negligence by the company led to the deaths. Other businesses at the industrial park, which hosts 52 companies, kept running.
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing was “saddened by the casualties” and had told its embassy in Jakarta to help, including with medical care for the injured.
President Joko Widodo called for better safety and tighter monitoring of environmental standards. He also said nickel processing remains a priority for the country’s economic development. Indonesia is the world’s biggest nickel producer, and the metal is a key component in electric vehicle batteries.
A run of deadly accidents
It was the third deadly incident of the year at Chinese-owned nickel smelters in Central Sulawesi, the province with Indonesia’s largest nickel reserves. Two dump truck operators died in April when a nickel waste site collapsed, and in January two workers, one of them Chinese, were killed in riots at a joint venture in North Morowali. The plants are part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The Mining Advocacy Network, an Indonesian watchdog, has recorded at least 22 deaths of Chinese and Indonesian workers at nickel smelters in the province since 2019.
Sources
- Death toll in Indonesia nickel plant blast rises to 18
- Death Toll Rises to 18 in Furnace Explosion at Chinese-owned Nickel Plant in Indonesia
