The team at Koppers’ Newcastle is working with the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) to make further improvements to its Mayfield North plant in response to an EPA audit and its issuing of clean up and prevention notices.

We identified the cause of the incidents and immediately started work on improvements to our management of vents and valves on storage tanks to prevent those incidents from happening again. Koppers has already updated the operating procedure for the tank in question to the EPA’s satisfaction and the tank is back in service. Our tanks are operating as designed.

The audit report provides a number of recommendations that will help us to further improve the plant’s performance and we are working through each recommendation. We will meet the EPA’s required actions within the specified timeframes.

In the past 10 years Koppers has invested $19 million on measures to upgrade its Newcastle plant to further improve its efficiency and environmental performance. More improvements are planned.

Koppers Newcastle beneficially reuses coal tar from Australian steelworks to produce pitch – an essential raw material for Australian aluminium smelters – as well as other products.

Media information: Craig Eardley on 0437477493