An explosion at a fine chemical enterprise in Hubei Province left five people dead and one injured.

Release Date:

2020-09-29

On the evening of September 28, the Hubei Provincial Emergency Management Department issued a breaking news update: at approximately 2:15 p.m. on September 28, 2020, during equipment commissioning at Tianmen Chutian Fine Chemical Co., Ltd. in the Yuekou Industrial Park of Tianmen City (hereinafter referred to as Tianmen Chutian Fine Chemical), an explosion occurred involving a plate-and-frame press. Preliminary findings indicate that five people died and one was injured at the scene, with search-and-rescue operations still ongoing.

According to the official website of Tianmen Chutian Fine Chemicals, the company was founded in 1997, originally as Xiantao Chutian Fine Chemical Plant. It is a pharmaceutical‑chemical enterprise specializing in the integrated research, development, production, and sales of pharmaceutical intermediates. In 2011, it established itself in Yuekou Industrial Park as a key investment‑attracting enterprise of Tianmen City. Specifically, the company’s products—2-chloro-1,4-naphthoquinone and 4-(4-chlorophenyl)cyclohexanecarboxylic acid—are two critical intermediates used in the synthesis of atovaquone, a WHO‑designated drug for treating AIDS. Additionally, 2,7-dichlorofluorene serves as an important intermediate in the production of benflumetol, an antimalarial agent. With their high technological content and superior quality, these products are marketed to large and medium‑sized pharmaceutical companies both domestically and internationally, as well as to organizations such as the World Health Organization.

According to a report by the Tianmen Daily on April 13, 2020, Lu Weiqiao, chairman of Tianmen Chutian Fine Chemicals, stated that the company had signed a purchase-and-sale contract worth 9.5 million yuan with Jiangsu Ruibang Agrochemical Co., Ltd. and was currently operating at full capacity to fulfill the order. The report also indicated that Tianmen Chutian Fine Chemicals had fully restored its production capacity.

However, on April 28, 2020, Tianmen Chutian Fine Chemical was issued a penalty by the environmental protection authorities. According to Qixinbao, the company was fined RMB 470,000 by the Tianmen Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment for discharging water pollutants in a manner that evaded regulatory oversight—specifically, by operating its wastewater treatment facilities abnormally.

Notably, a notice issued in April 2020 by the Hubei Provincial Emergency Management Department indicated that, based on the safety risk assessment and grading results for hazardous chemical production and storage enterprises in Hubei Province, companies such as Tianmen Chutian Fine Chemical were assigned a yellow risk level. The announcement further stated that regulatory authorities, adhering to the principle of “prioritizing rectification of orange‑rated enterprises, strengthening and upgrading yellow‑rated enterprises, and consolidating and improving blue‑rated enterprises,” have implemented rigorous oversight and enforcement through routine inspections, targeted supervisory checks, and unannounced spot audits, thereby reinforcing enterprise‑level safety risk management and control.

Source: Daily Economic News

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