‘I know I have a dust problem’: ADM repeatedly failed to prevent potentially deadly grain explosions - Investigate Midwest
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Around 6:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve in 2022, flames ripped through the bowels of an industrial facility in Fremont, Nebraska. Elevators were scorched. Conveyor belts collapsed. Metal doors melted. As smoke filled the sky, employees scrambled to escape. One dialed 911. “The plant’s on fire,” he hurriedly breathed. “Is everybody out of there?” The dispatcher […]
  • Improvements slow-walked. ADM leadership has at times been slow to address a critical component of grain explosions: the accumulation of highly flammable dust. After a 2022 blast in Nebraska, ADM blamed the presence of dust on its maintenance contractors. A longtime safety executive admitted the plant’s manager had been trying to improve dust maintenance prior to the incident: “I’m going to say something that our attorney isn’t going to like. (The manager) has been trying to get rid of the maintenance company for quite some time.”
  • An outlier. ADM has had at least eight grain explosions between 2018 and 2024, according to Purdue University research. Only one other company in the agriculture industry has had more than one grain explosion during that time period.
  • Little accountability. In 2019, federal safety officials found numerous failures led to an explosion at an ADM facility in Illinois, but it issued no fine. Years later, the same issues — poor maintenance — led to an explosion that hospitalized workers with severe burns.