Pet food manufacturing company Ziwi Ltd's premises in Mount Maunganui. Photo / File
Pet food manufacturing company Ziwi Ltd's premises in Mount Maunganui. Photo / File
Pet food manufacturer Ziwi Limited has apologised to the local community for discharges from its processing site in Mount Maunganui in 2018.
A judge has fined the company $64,000 on charges relating to wastewater discharges from the site that saw wash-down water with residue from meat processing reach a stormwater system that led to Tauranga Harbour.
That followed a $66,000 fine last year for offensive odours emitted from the site.
Ziwi pleaded guilty to both sets of charges.
The Bay of Plenty Regional Council, which prosecuted Ziwi under the Resource Management Act, has called the fines an "excellent outcome".
The council's compliance manager, Alex Miller, said he hoped the fines would be a "strong deterrent for further discharges".
He said the prosecutions highlighted the need for companies to be mindful of their environmental impacts.
"These cases demonstrate the seriousness of discharges which encroach on the community's ability to enjoy their neighbourhood and impact our waterways."
Ziwi managing director Richard Lawrence said the company accepted the court's findings.
Ziwi Ltd managing director Richard Lawrence in 2015. Photo / File
He said the company "wishes to apologise to the local community for the 2018 discharge of odour and release of the small amount of wash-down water from its Mount Maunganui processing site".
He said Ziwi was focused on reducing its environmental footprint. As part of this, it had invested $500,000 in a state-of-the-art air purifying system at the Mount Maunganui site. It had also replaced its waste sump and installed a new wastewater treatment system.
Lawrence said Ziwi's production would move from Mount Maunganui to a new kitchen in Napier with "world-class air and water treatment processing capability" later this year.
The staged transition to the new site would likely start in late 2021 and run through to mid-2022.
In the wastewater matter, Ziwi was fined $16,000 for each of four charges, according to a sentencing decision recently issued by Judge David Kirkpatrick.
Ziwi previously pleaded guilty to the charges. Three related to discharges of a contaminant into stormwater systems that flow into Tauranga Harbour on April 19 and 20 and November 13 in 2018. The fourth was a breach of an abatement notice in the November incident.
Process wastewater from Ziwi was discharged into an open stormwater drain that flows into the Tauranga Harbour. Photo / Supplied
The charges were laid by the regional council after an investigation that showed process wastewater from the wash bay at Ziwi's Boeing Place manufacturing plant was discharged into an onsite stormwater catch pit, which drained directly into the nearby open stormwater drain.
In the first April incident, council inspectors observed yellow foam, an oily sheen and a "pungent non-chemical odour" in the drain and found waste material and brown foam in a grate, according to the decision.
The next day they found a "milky discharge" and fatty deposits on the water. Later they "observed blood from defrosting meat products on a pallet and saw washdown water flowing over the concrete and into the stormwater grate". They also found meat residue.
An abatement notice was issued later in April but this was breached in November after a small amount of residue from a meat spillage was washed into the stormwater catch pit.
In his written decision, Judge Kirkpatrick found Ziwi's staff seemed to take an "out of sight, out of mind" approach by flushing industrial washdown water into the municipal stormwater system.
"While there is limited evidence of direct effects on the environment caused by this offending, it is not difficult to understand the extent to which every discharge, no matter how small, may have cumulative effects across the catchment and through time."
He said the main principle in sentencing should be deterrence.
"Every operator of a commercial or industrial activity which may involve the washdown of any part of their premises must contain the contaminants mobilised by that washdown for disposal."
Last year Ziwi was fined $66,000 over odours from its Mount Maunganui plant that were so putrid they left some feeling "physically ill".
In that case, Ziwi pleaded guilty to a representative charge under the Resource Management Act of discharging a contaminant from an industrial or trade premises into the air on five occasions in 2018.
