Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations S.A. is investing more than two million Euros in the replacement of the oil storage facility (‘oil farm’) and other upgrades at its Tire Plant in Colmar-Berg. Following two incidents leading to spills of low quantities of non-hazardous oil into the River Attert in April 2016, the company accelerated its investment program and took crucial preventive measures.

First, the company made an immediate decision to bring forward the schedule for the creation of a state-of-the-art oil farm.  This was followed by far-reaching works to upgrade underground pipes such as storm lines to measure the presence of hydrocarbons including oil in the water exiting the plant and fully contain any non-water particles at source. Finally, Goodyear has initiated plans to install a ‘scum baffle’ which is a control mechanism between the plant and the river which surface skims the water flowing from the canal to the river.

“Since April, we have made huge progress on this three-point prevention approach. We invest more than 2 million Euro. Not only could we address areas where the need for an upgrade was already known, like the storm lines, but we could also implement sizeable improvements concerning our process oil handling and storage. This will allow us to run a new oil farm much earlier than anticipated,” said John Ries, Director of Manufacturing, Goodyear Luxembourg.  

He underlined that despite new tanks being installed, the existing retention basin has also been triple sealed to avoid any further spill. “These tanks and the retention basin will be dismantled as soon as the new tanks become operational.  A combination of the new oil farm, storm lines and scum baffle will guarantee that incidents of this kind should not happen in future,” he added.

Goodyear uses process oil in its rubber mixing operation to produce compound required for tire manufacture. This process oil is stored in an area called the oil farm.