Background
The Qinghe Special Steel Corporation ltd, established in 1987, had originally been a state-owned enterprise, and had been restructured into a private business. According to the State Administration of Work Safety, the plant had about 300 employees at the time of the accident, although Xinhua gave the employment figure as 650. In 2006, the factory produced 70,000 tonnes of steel and had hoped to increase production to 120,000 tonnes in 2007.
The building where the disaster occurred was used by the Qinghe Special Steel Corporation as a steel processing plant. The ladle which failed carried molten steel from a blast furnace to other processes, and had a diameter of two metres and a capacity of 30 tons (25 tonnes) of liquid steel. It ran on a rail at a height of three metres above the factory floor.
Read more about this topic: Qinghe Special Steel Corporation Disaster
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