Whisky bottling plant fined for pollution

Whisky bottling plant Glen Catrine Bonded Warehouse has been fined £12,000 for spilling 6,600 litres of Scotch into a river.

Glen Catrine Bonded Warehouse has been fined for spilling 6,600 litres of whisky into the River Ayr

The company admitted to spilling the whisky into the River Ayr in 2011 during a hearing at Ayr Sheriff Court.

According to the BBC, the incident occurred when a road tanker containing 27,500 litres of whisky encountered difficulty when some of the spirit was pumped into a wrong vat.

Since the tanker had no high level alarms, the error went unnoticed until it was spotted by a passing employee, but by this time the river was already polluted.

This spill was also not then properly dealt with as neither the duty production manager or the operator had received training on how to deal with spills.

“The risk of pollution of the river should have been one of the considerations at the forefront of the company’s policies,” procurator fiscal Sara Shaw told the BBC after the hearing was finalised.

“Due to the absence of a number of appropriate systems and staff training, there was always the risk of accident or an overfill incident if an error was made.”

Shaw added that improvements had now been made to the site to prevent similar errors occurring.