Fire in a battery container causes EUR 700,000 in damage in Germany

Batteries in an overseas container caught fire on June 7 at Suncycle’s engineering and test centre in Thuringia, Germany. According to local media reports, the fire department took more than four hours to extinguish the fire. The damage is estimated at EUR 700,000. The cause is still unclear, but a technical defect is suspected.

Significant amounts of smoke were produced by the fire started before it could finally be extinguished. The district office had asked residents to keep their windows and doors closed and the federal German government’s warning app was triggered to inform affected residents.

A local news site reported that the firefighters used a grappling hook to open the container’s doors, cool the batteries with water, and finally extinguish the fire. The affected container was pulled away from the other battery containers with a tractor to prevent the flames from spreading.

Suncycle has not released any statements or answered press enquiries about the incident.

The case is strongly reminiscent of a fire in the northwest of Germany in Neermoor towards the end of April this year when a container storing lithium-ion batteries from Intilion caught fire. The police estimated the damage at 500,000 euros at the time. In this case too, the cause of the fire is still unclear, as an Intilion employee recently confirmed.