Cheminova’s closure leaves mixed feelings in western Jutland

FMC, formerly known as Cheminova, will close its chemical plant on Harboøre Tange near Lemvig at the turn of the year, DR reports. The plant leaves behind one of Denmark’s largest cases of historical pollution, but many local residents are mourning its closure rather than celebrating it.

“Cheminova is an ambivalent story,” said Inger Bjørn Knudsen, a museum curator at Lemvig Museum, which has created a special exhibition about Cheminova and western Jutland.

“On the one hand, Cheminova was a fantastic workplace. On the other hand, there is also concern. It is not expressed very often or very strongly here in western Jutland, but it is there,” she said.

Environmental campaigners, local residents, experts and politicians have repeatedly raised concerns about pollution at Høfde 42, the old Cheminova site and the current factory site. More than 150 tonnes of chemicals have probably been deposited across the three locations.

A boost for the local economy

In the 1950s, the business council in Lemvig was searching for something that could “get things moving” in western Jutland. It approached Cheminova founder Gunnar Andreasen and suggested that he locate the factory there, according to Knudsen.

Residents and the municipality in Måløv on Zealand had complained that wastewater from the production of insecticide threatened the water environment. The factory moved from Måløv to Harboøre Tange in western Jutland in 1953.

Cheminova brought more than jobs to the area. It provided a major boost to a remote region, Knudsen said. The company needed highly educated staff for the laboratories in its development department, helping to attract residents with skills for which there had previously been relatively few jobs locally.

“It changed the demographics,” Knudsen said.

Lemvig Gymnasium is often mentioned as one of the institutions that emerged after Cheminova arrived in the region. The company’s office workers and engineers needed a school to which they could send their children, she said.

“A fantastic workplace”

Cheminova also brought something in short supply in the western Jutland labour market of the 1950s and 1960s: jobs with good and stable wages.

“Many people in the area were fishermen. So it was attractive to enter a system where everything was more stable and you knew when you would be paid,” Knudsen said.

Many employees celebrated 20, 30 and 40 years of service, and a strong sense of community continues to this day, even though the factory is now called FMC Rønland. Locals speak of an “us at Cheminova” feeling.

“I have come across it many times. It is not just a ‘good workplace’. People say: ‘Cheminova is a fantastic workplace!’” Knudsen said.

Cheminova was among the world’s leading producers of insecticides and was the area’s largest private-sector employer for a generation. Everyone in the local community knows at least one person who works at the factory.

Pollution remains a concern

That is why the name Cheminova means more to local people than simply poison and its destructive consequences. The subject can be difficult to discuss with people who live far from Høfde 42.

At first, people from outside the area showed the greatest interest in lectures and in the exhibition “Cheminova and western Jutland” at Lemvig Museum. Local residents have since begun attending as well, Knudsen said.

Many people in the area also developed cancer. A local doctor became concerned after seeing unusually high numbers of patients with cancer, particularly kidney and bladder cancer.

A 2018 study found that people who lived in Thyborøn-Harboøre around 1970 experienced about 20 per cent more cases of cancer up to 2018 than residents of two other local areas in western Jutland. The study did not establish a connection between the cancer cases and Cheminova’s waste.