Fishing giant to investigate box waste on Otago Peninsula

Broad Bay resident Barrie Mangan with some of the disintegrated Sealord boxes that washed up on Allans Beach. Photo / Peter McIntosh

Fishing giant Sealord is reviewing how it stops waste going overboard from its vessels after more than 50 cardboard boxes washed up on the Otago Peninsula this week.

Broad Bay resident Barrie Mangan was walking his dog along Allans Beach about 10.30am yesterday when he came across the disintegrating remains of cardboard boxes strewn across the beach.

Labels were missing or peeling off, but he could see Sealord has written on them and the words "processed at sea" and "product of New Zealand".

The mess was "unsightly and dangerous", given the chemicals the paper might contain, Mangan said.

General manager of marketing and sustainability at Sealord Group, Stuart Yorston, said the company was concerned some of its packaging material washed up on the beach.

He promised a "full investigation" of how the boxes came off a vessel.

Two people were sent to the beach yesterday to begin investigating and to collect any remaining rubbish.

The investigation would include a review of the controls Sealord had on board its vessels.

"Sealord has a strong focus on sustainability and as such we have stringent controls to make sure no waste enters the ocean from our vessels, so we are keen to understand what happened in this case."

He promised to advise "the people of Dunedin" when it knew more about what happened.

Communications and marketing manager of the Otago Regional Council, Jo Galer, said the council's pollution hotline had received no reports about the boxes.

Staff were to visit the beach to investigate yesterday.

Any such finds should be reported to the ORC hotline at 0800 800 033, she said.