Plant explosion kills seven people in China as government launches safety inspection campaign

Blast follows incident at chemical park which killed 78 people last week

A damaged building at the metal-moulding plant in Kunshan where an explosion killed seven people (REUTERS)

A plant explosion in China's Jiangsu province has killed seven people, authorities said on Sunday.

It was the second deadly blast in the province this month as Beijing begins a nationwide industrial safety inspection campaign.

The explosion on Sunday involved a container of scrap metal that exploded in the outdoor yard of a metal-moulding plant, causing the plant to catch fire, in the city of Kunshan, according to local government.

The cause of the blast, which killed seven people and injured five others, is being investigated, local government said.

One of the injured people is reported to be severely hurt.

The plant’s owner Kunshan Waffer Technology Corp Ltd, a Taiwan-based maker of magnesium alloy injection moulding products and aluminium alloy die castings, was not immediately available for comment.

The company was fined last May by the Kunshan environmental protection bureau for violating water pollution rules, according to state-owned newspaper The Beijing News.

Kunshan, about 70km (43 miles) west of Shanghai, is home to more than 1,000 technology companies and manufacturers, including many Taiwanese firms.

Sunday's incident follows a deadly blast on 21 March at a chemical park in the city of Yancheng, also in Jiangsu province, that killed 78 people and focused attention on safety at small chemical firms.

Last week, Beijing officials said they will launch a month-long, nationwide inspection campaign into hazardous chemicals, mines, transportation and fire safety, adding that authorities needed to absorb lessons from the Yancheng disaster.

China has a history of major work safety accidents which often trigger inspection campaigns, aimed at rooting out violations and punishing officials for cutting corners or shirking their supervisory duties.

The country has clamped down on scrap metal imports as part of an environmental campaign against "foreign garbage", tightening supply sources for metal producers, as it aims to cut solid waste imports by the end of 2020.

Reuters