A tanker carrying wet tar spilt litres of the sticky substance on Rotorua's Te Ngae Rd yesterday, causing traffic delays as the mess was cleaned up.
Police closed off a lane of traffic on Te Ngae Rd and the left turn into Sala St, after a Fulton-Hogan tanker spilt about 50 litres of tar on the road about 11am yesterday.
Rotorua police Senior Constable Grant Keys said the truck had braked suddenly to avoid a collision with a car at an intersection, rupturing the top hatch of the tanker which let its contents pour on to the road. The tar spill stretched more than 2km along the road, with the thickest of it at the Te Ngae Rd and Sala St intersection on the city-bound lane.
"The tar is not the problem, it's the volume of it. The tail of it stretches all the way to Basley Rd," Mr Keys said.
In a statement, Fulton-Hogan's Bay of Plenty regional manager Gavin Riddle said the company worked with State Highway maintenance contractors and the New Zealand Transport Agency to ensure the area was reopened to traffic as quickly as possible.