Port of Tyne chief reveals it took 'five seconds' to spill 17 tonnes of nurdles in South Shields
The Port of Tyne’s top boss has revealed the scale of the nurdle spill disaster as community prepares to help with the clean up operation.
It took around five seconds for an estimated 17 tonnes of plastic pellets to spill into the River Tyne after a ship collision ripped open containers like ‘cans of beans’.
Matt Beeton, the Port of Tyne’s CEO, revealed the scale of the disaster on Wednesday, August 5, having completed the first phase of the salvage operation.
The nurdle spill follows the Wind Ocra vessel colliding with the berthed BG Orange on Sunday, July 19, which also caused a gantry crane on the Port’s quayside to collapse.
‘The nurdles took about five seconds to go into the water’
Mr Beeton has explained that the Port didn’t know about the nurdles until the following day and revealed that staff worked to prevent another 58 tonnes from entering the river.
He said: “The Wind Ocra left its berth and instead of heading further into the river, it went into the side of the BG Orange and cut holes in the hull and containers like a can of beans.
“We didn’t know at the time but there was three containers of nurdles on that ship - one was damaged and two were ripped open.
“Each container contains 25 tonnes and out of the two that were ripped open, we have recovered 33 tonnes and prevented another 25 tonnes from going into the river.
“The nurdles took about five seconds to go into the water - there was no long stream entering the river hour after hour.
“No one knew about the nurdles until the Monday afternoon [July 20] and that’s when we instantly flagged it with North and South Tyneside Council.
“Ambipar, who are global specialists on clearing things like this up, arrived at the Port on the Tuesday and they will remain with us until all of this is sorted.
“We couldn’t get access to the area until the Wednesday but that’s not to say we weren’t doing anything as we had Ambipar and Swiftwater Solutions out on the river working.
“Ultimately, our staff stopped 58 tonnes of nurdles from going into the water but I understand people’s anger over this.
“We were working day and night to try and stop this becoming a much bigger situation.”
Community clean up operation
Earlier this week, campaigners called on the Port to allow volunteers to help with the clean up operation and Matt has shared more details on how the community can get involved.
He added: “Now that the phase one of securing the damaged ship and containers is complete, we’re now entering a second phase where we want to get volunteers on the river.
“It’s really important for us to work alongside the community but we couldn’t engage volunteers because of the salvage operation.
“Volunteers have to be mariners, experienced and it has to be done in a controlled manner to ensure people’s safety.
“Our harbourmaster has created a schedule of times and areas that are safe for the public to help with the clean up so once the mariners come forward, we’ll arrange them.
“It was good to meet with campaigners and I love their passion - it is one of the positives to come out of all of this.
“All we ask is that people are kind to our staff who have gone through a lot.”
Out of the 17 tonnes of nurdles that entered the water, the Port of Tyne stated that it has removed around 10 tonnes - with that total not including what has been removed from North East beaches.