Caterpillar (NI) has been fined £7,500 for discharging more than 40,000 litres of diesel into the Irish Sea in Larne.

The firm pleaded guilty at Antrim Crown Court.

On Saturday 11 June 2016, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) received a report from a member of the public that a significant fuel spill had occurred in the vicinity of Larne Harbour.

NIEA sent a Water Quality Inspector to the area in order to carry out an investigation. As NIEA's investigation was ongoing, staff from Caterpillar (NI) reported, via the NIEA Water Pollution Hotline, that a diesel spill had occurred overnight at their factory on the Old Glenarm Road, Larne.

Caterpillar staff first discovered the diesel spillage at 7am on 11 June but initially believed that the spill had been contained within the site. The company reported the incident to NIEA once they became aware that an unknown quantity of diesel had discharged to the Irish Sea.

The spillage had occurred sometime in the late afternoon on Friday, 10 June when a system failure caused diesel to overflow from storage tanks to the factory floor, which then entered into the factory's storm drainage system before discharging to the Irish Sea.

NIEA's investigation concluded that more than 40,000 litres of diesel had been discharged to the Irish Sea, impacting a significant area beyond the point of discharge at Larne, with visible impact noted some three kilometres eastward to Brown's Bay and nine kilometres north to Southtown.

Caterpillar (NI) Ltd also conducted their own internal investigation into the reasons for the failure of their fuel storage and delivery systems.

The Judge heard that company had put in place a number of additional "fail safes" in respect of the operation of their fuel systems in order to minimise the risk of a similar incident occurring in the future.

A sample taken at the time of the incident confirmed that the discharge was diesel.

(CD/LM)