Ziwi pet food manufacturing company in Mount Maunganui is being prosecuted for odour offences. Photo / File
Ziwi pet food manufacturing company in Mount Maunganui is being prosecuted for odour offences. Photo / File
A Tauranga pet food manufacturing company faces a potentially large fine for discharging offensive odours from its Mount Maunganui-based plant.
Ziwi Limited, which has pleaded guilty to a representative charge of a discharging a contaminant from an industrial or trade premises into the air, was due to be sentenced inthe Environment Court at Tauranga yesterday.
The representative charge related to discharges of objectionable or offensive odours from beyond Ziwi's Boeing Pl site near Tauranga Airport on five occasions between June 12 and October 18 in 2018.
The maximum penalty for these breaches of the Resource Management Act is a fine of $600,000.
Prosecution by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council came after numerous complaints, an abatement notice, four infringement notices, and formal warning letter issued in 2018.
About 10 tonnes of raw product is manufactured at the site each day which generates three tonnes of finished food products, the court heard.
The remaining seven tonnes is water waste, which is mostly discharged through the plant's four drier exhaust stacks.
The council's lawyer Adam Hopkinson submitted to Judge David Kirkpatrick that a fine starting point of $100,000 was appropriate given the history of complaints and Ziwi's level of non-compliance with its obligations.
Hopkinson told Judge David Kirkpatrick said between 2008 to 2017, the regional council received 224 complaints from the public about discharges of odour from the site.
He said the council has had extensive communications with Ziwi about the discharges and a deodoriser system was reinstated in 2016 but only connected to one stack, he said.
Hopkinson said abatement notice was issued on November 25, 2016, and in 2017 Ziwi made further attempts to mitigate the odour discharges.
Drier exhaust stacks at Ziwi Limited's Mount Maunganui plant. Photo / Supplied
However, he said the chemical deodoriser system and raising the stack heights of the driers were unsuccessful, and infringement notices were issued in 2017, followed by a formal warning letter in February 2018.
Hopkinson said despite those notices, the regional council investigated more complaints from the public on at least a dozen separate occasions in 2018.
He said Ziwi's culpability was "at the high end of the scale" and while some mitigation steps had been taken, the company had invested in cheaper and "inadequate" measures.
Hopkinson said impacts of Ziwi's offending were outlined in the various victim impact statements and included nausea, dry-retching and an "overpowering" putrid, rank smell.
One complainant described the odour was like the "smell of dead animals" and even one of the council officers investigating the complaints was left dry-retching, he said.
Hopkinson said a discount of no more than 10 per cent discount for Ziwi's guilty pleas was appropriate.
He asked for 90 per cent of the fine to be paid to the regional council, which he said would not even cover all the costs of taking the prosecution.
Ziwi Limited's lawyer Glyn Hughes argued the regional council's sentence starting point was too high and $60,000 was more appropriate.
Hughes said his client had gone to considerable expense trying to mitigate the effects of any odours, which included trialling a new $250,000 chemical-based deodoriser system.
Ziwi also investigated a plasma odour mitigation system but that was deemed unsuitable as it would require massive changes and $400,000 to reconfigure the plant, he said.
Hughes argued Ziwi was a victim of intensification of commercial premises establishing in the mainly industrial-zoned area and "reverse-sensitivity" by some of the complaints.
He urged Judge Kirkpatrick to take these factors into account.
Hughes said the company had been using the same products and manufacturing techniques for 10 years up to 2016 without complaint.
"We are only talking about five discrete complaints here with relatively modest effects if we put those five complaints into context," he submitted.
Ziwi had fully co-operated with the regional council's investigation and significant remedial steps were taken which the company also deserved credit for, he said.
Judge Kirkpatrick reserved his sentencing decision.
