BREWERY giant Heineken has been ordered to pay more than £10,000 after it admitted breaching an environmental permit at its Tadcaster brewery.

A court heard more than 110,000 pints of beer and cider were accidentally sent from its John Smith’s Brewery site to an effluent treatment plant owned by a third party.

The company was fined £500 on each of three charges of breaching its permit and another £800 on failing to notify the Environment Agency of the breach without delay.

It was also ordered to pay costs of £8,225 to the Environment Agency, which regulates the site through the permit and brought the case.

Selby Magistrates Court heard that on August 5, 2008, faults resulted in 32,600 litres of cider being diverted to the effluent plant.

Faults on the system which should have been detected were not, as the company had earlier bypassed the plant’s electronic monitoring system.

The company’s permit required it to notify the Environment Agency such issues without delay, but it failed to do so until six days later.

Later that month, 32,000 litres of beer were lost to the treatment plant when an employee selected the wrong operating mode on a vat full of beer.

There were no training materials or written procedures provided to staff on how to operate this system properly. There were no notices or safeguards in the selection process, although the company had since disabled this part of the system, and the agency wasn’t notified of this incident until three days later.

At the end of August, 11,000 kilogrammes of yeast was diverted to an emergency tank after a pipe worked loose. The equipment was not maintained in good condition. In mitigation, the company was given credit for its early guilty plea and the fact there was no impact on the environment.

An agency spokesman said afterwards: “This case proves that we take environmental regulation seriously, regardless of the size of the company involved.

“Small breaches in procedure can lead to big environmental impacts. We’re lucky on this occasion that there was no pollution, but the rules are there for a reason and, working with the courts, we will ensure that they are upheld.”