Fire temporarily halts work at Hyundai Motor’s Beijing plant

A fire that broke out at Hyundai Motor’s Beijing Plant No. 1 in China on Tuesday was extinguished within two hours, without much damage to the automaker, company officials said on Wednesday.

The fire halted the plant’s entire operations, the carmaker said.

The fire-damaged plant is one of the three Beijing-based plants located in the Linhe Industrial Development Zone, Shunyi District, Beijing. They are identified as Beijing Plant No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3.

The country’s leading carmaker said that the fire occurred in one of the three sections of the paint shop. A company spokeman said that the fire-damaged area was small, but the company halted all operations because the painting process must be carried out in tune with the rest of the operations.

Inflammable substances may have reacted with paint and caused the fire, reports said. The carmaker, however, has yet to give a clear explanation for the cause of the fire, citing the need for further investigation.

The plant produces about 1,300 automobiles every day and 300,000 every year, the company said.

The carmaker added that the fire would not bring down sales volume because it had accumulated many Accent, Tuscon, Verna, Elantra and Mingyu models in stock, ready to be sold. The cars, produced in the Plant No. 1, could take a month to sell out, equivalent to the estimated time needed to fully restore the damaged plant, the spokesman said. 

By Chung Joo-won (joowonc@heraldcorp.com)