Pratteln: Redevelopment of the Rohner site is underway

Hiag had acquired the Rohner AG site, which is centrally located in Pratteln, Switzerland. in August 2018 via sale-and-leaseback transaction was taken over by Hiag. Rohner AG was initially to remain a tenant on the 32,000 sqm site; in the medium term, Hiag wanted to develop the site. In August of this year, however, Rohner filed for bankruptcy, which also weighed on Hiag's results. The company was one of the largest tenants of the real estate company.

Hiag then decided to tackle the development of the site in a timely manner. This required extensive remediation of the contaminated site. As it further turned out, a leak in a wastewater pipe had led to significant groundwater contamination between November 2018 and February 2019: Around 20 million liters of industrial wastewater leaked into the groundwater. According to the canton of Basel-Landschaft, the costs of dealing with the groundwater contamination are currently in excess of CHF 700,000. In principle, these costs are to be borne by the polluter, the communiqué says. However, Rohner AG will be liquidated.

Hiag, as the landowner of the site, has taken over 22 employees from Rohner to take care of the safety and cleanup of the site. Since the beginning of July, 250 of the more than 500 tons of waste have been disposed of - Hiag will bear the full cost of disposal, the canton said. Hiag will draw up a concept for the complete cleaning of the production facilities and the subsequent dismantling of the site, it adds. The cleaning work alone is expected to take until the fall of 2020. The cantonal authorities estimate the cost of cleaning up the contaminated site at CHF 1.5 million. From today's perspective, the public sector will not have to contribute to these costs. (ah)