Hydro Henderson Plant Out of Operation Due to Explosion

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster):  An explosion in melting furnace of Hydro’s aluminum remelt and recycling plant located in 5801 Riverport Road, Henderson, Kentucky has left the plant out of operation. It took place on Tuesday, January 22. No injuries were reported due to the explosion, but it caused severe damages to the melting furnace, thereby making it unable to produce casthouse products, said the news release by the company.

According to Hydro, the cause of the explosion is not yet known. However, it has already started to mobilize internal resources to form an investigation team into the incident. The melting furnace is beyond repair, sources said.

The outage is unlikely to affect the billet market. The customer disruption is expected to be very limited in the short term. The commercial team of the company has already carried out an evaluation of immediate critical customer needs. Hydro is currently focusing on securing metals from other sources so as to minimize customer impact. Meantime, it is unsure as to how many weeks the plant may have to remain out of operation.

The Henderson plant, the first U.S. remelter to utilize state-of-the-art technology to yield primary-quality billet, has a production capacity of nearly 90,000 metric tons of metal per year. The plant produces extrusion ingot from extrusion process scrap and-post consumer scrap. The remelt product is mainly sold to the U.S Midwest aluminum extrusion industry.