The Departament d’Empresa i Treball has proposed a penalty of 2.1 million to Iqoxe for four very serious infractions of the regulations on industrial safety as a result of the serious explosion suffered in January 2020. The largest infraction, of a million euros, corresponds to the modification of the manufacturing recipe of the product without the company carrying out any prior test.
Not supervising the control room panel in the moments before and at the time of the accident and silencing the audible alarms of the security system in this same room implies two penalties of more than half a million. The lack of specific training for employees entails a fourth fine of 100,000 euros. This is the highest industrial safety penalty that this Department has proposed so far and against which the company has ten days to argue.
The file was opened after the explosion of one of the reactors of the IOXE company, dedicated to the production of ethylene oxide, glycols and derivatives of ethylene oxide and propylene oxide at the plant located in La Canonja (Tarragona). Three people died in the accident, two plant employees and a resident of Tarragona, and four others were injured.
Empresa i Treball maintains that the company pre-manufactured a batch of the MPEG 500 product by modifying the manufacturing recipe. Specifically, the company would have changed the size of the batch, the catalyst to be used and the amount used, “without respecting the manufacturer’s instructions, without evaluating these changes and without carrying out any prior test or trial to verify if the reaction was safe,” it reports in your statement.
The document closes when the judicial instruction faces its final stretch. Department sources maintain that the total destruction of the damaged reactor and the control room have made the investigation very difficult. As the judicial proceeding is in progress, regardless of whether or not the company presents allegations, the sanction will be suspended until the judgment is delivered.
