There is more breaking news for the supply chain, although not news that everyone is happy with. The Detroit free press report The fire broke out at the factory of Tier 1 automotive OEM supplier Dicastal North America in Greenville, Michigan around 9:45 p.m. Friday. Discastal North America’s website says they make “light aluminum alloy wheels” and their list of customers includes fiat chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda’s motobike, NISSANAnd Toyota. The cause of Friday night’s fire is still under investigation, with emergency personnel saying it appeared to have occurred around the blast furnace room, where molten aluminum and magnesium are prepared for the wheel-making process. . Whatever caused the fire had enough force to blow off the back of the northeast corner of the building, creating piles of debris outside made up of the material inside the factory. Residents miles away claim to have felt their homes shake since the initial boom.
The North American branch is a subsidiary of the Chinese company CITIC Dicastal Co. Headquartered in China calls itself “the world’s largest supplier of aluminum alloy wheels”. auto news ranks the company 58th out of the top 100 global auto suppliers in 2020 based on sales.
An employee was injured in the explosion, and the man was taken to an area hospital with severe burns. All workers have been counted. Emergency crews said they had the burn under control in four hours and finished in six hours.
Aluminum and magnesium smelting is dangerous work at the best of times. IN China In 2014, an explosion at Kunshan Zhongrong Metal Products’ factory near Shanghai killed 75 workers and injured 185. The fire started because aluminum dust generated during the polishing of aluminum wheels; Kunshan Zhongrong not only polished aluminum wheels for GM, which is Dicastal’s component supplier. One of the worst factory explosions in recent memory, it was one of a series of incidents time to convince the Chinese government to overhaul factory safety standards.
Dicastal has had a little time here when it comes to fires. Smaller flame hit the same site two months ago, the rooftop site, which is said to focus on machinery that collects metal dust from industrial processes. Three fires occurred at the same time in factory in July 2020. Already available a fire in another dust collection area in October 2019, a report at the time mentioned “There have been several fires in the past three years at the DNA factory.” And if we turn to legal firefighting, FBI raid factory July last year for reasons that have yet to be revealed.
We still don’t know what potential disruptions could result from the incident. Dicastal’s plant here is normally open 24 hours, and although the site of the explosion has suffered extensive structural damage, other parts of the plant are still operational. Automakers among the reported customers have responded free of chargeTheir queries say there will be no impact or they are looking into the matter.
