Second China Factory Explosion This Month Leaves 7 People Dead

(Bloomberg) -- A blast at a Taiwan-listed company’s factory in China on Sunday killed seven people, the government says, just over a week after an explosion in the same eastern province left scores dead.

The explosion at a metal-processing plant owned by Waffer Technology (Kunshan) Ltd. also injured five people, the government of Kunshan, which is in Jiangsu province and borders Shanghai, said in a post on its Weibo social media account. The blast was caused by a container of scrap metal bursting into flames and setting a workshop ablaze just after 7 a.m., the government said.

Waffer Technology (Kunshan) is a major production base for Taiwan-listed Waffer Technology Corp., according to the latter’s website.

The industrial accident comes 10 days after an explosion at chemical plant in Chenjiagang, Jiangsu province. The official Xinhua News Agency updated the death toll for that incident to 78 on March 25. Police took people into custody over the incident in Chenjiagang, Xinhua reported earlier.

China has been seeking to make workplaces safer after industrial accidents that included a massive explosion in 2015 at a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin that killed 173 people. A blast in 2014 at an auto-parts plant in Suzhou, also in Jiangsu, killed 146 people.

--With assistance from Jing Jin.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Dandan Li in Beijing at dli395@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew Davis at abdavis@bloomberg.net, Philip Glamann, Stanley James

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

With assistance from Bloomberg