Cheminova

Facts

Chemical factory moves out to the country

By Morten Pedersen, Cand.mag., phd. Museumsinspektør på Nordjyllands Historiske Museum (16 stories)

Cheminova was founded in Søborg in 1938, but for environmental reasons moved to Rønland on the Harboøre Peninsula in 1953. Out there, as far as possible from Copenhagen, they hoped to avoid problems with neighbours. The production of insecticides and herbicides, for example, was a poisonous affair – also for the factory's surroundings. A few months after production started, the area's birds and fish began dying. By 1957, the conditions were so intolerable that Rønland's 10 smallholders sold their land to the factory. But generally speaking, the locals have liked Cheminova, which had 800 employees in Denmark in 2009.

Not a public place

Selected entry

Bladan brings back childhood memories

Story written by Morten Pedersen

Time / Periode 1938 2009

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I associate summer with the smell of pesticide drifting on the cool morning air. I grew up on a West Jutland farm and my room faced the place where my father filled the crop sprayer on early summer mornings. The soil had to be sprayed while there was no wind. The smell came from something my father called the yellow stuff". I don't know what it was, but I remember Bladan from Cheminova. It was an insecticide with skulls on the containers. I knew very well not to go near it. On the evening news we saw pictures of how birds and fish were dying at groyne 42 on Harboøre Peninsula where Cheminova had its toxic waste dump. "