PT Matic has so far shipped 2,500 tonnes of hazardous waste out of Malta, mostly asbestos, but also industrial waste and waste from the pharmaceutical industry, according to the company’s managing director, Derek Broadley.
Forming part of the Alberta Group, PT Matic specialises in the removal and disposal of hazardous materials which is classified by the Basel Convention and which controls the way it is handled.
“A number of EU directives have brought about huge improvements in the way hazardous waste is treated in Malta. Business will surely gain with the growth of this sector,” Mr Broadley says.
Although PT Matic has been very successful in shipping hazardous waste out of the country, Malta still lacks proper facilities for the handling of such waste.
“Malta has extremely limited facilities for the storage of hazardous material. In previous years everything used to be dumped at Maghtab, but thank goodness that is a thing of the past. However, in the meantime the country needs a storage facility and Wasteserv has applied for one, so hopefully it will be approved by Mepa,” Mr Broadley tells The Times Business in an interview.
“We usually transport hazardous waste direct from a site straight to a waiting ship. However, Malta needs storage facilities because sometimes quantities of waste are too small to ship out, and therefore can’t be transported out of Malta immediately.”
Mr Broadley explains that originally the company had a problem because no shipping line would agree to transport asbestos out of the country. Sea Malta, he said, accepted to but then that shipping line was dissolved. However, other shipping lines later accepted to transport the asbestos as they realised there existed a business opportunity.
“Most countries banned the use of asbestos, which causes incurable lung cancer, in the 1980s. Unfortunately, it is still not illegal to mine and use asbestos in India,” he says.
Major asbestos removal projects carried out by PT Matic include work on the site of the new US Embassy in Ta’ Qali, Malta Shipyards and Boffa and Gozo general hospitals. The company has also been involved in clean-up projects last year following a major spillage.
“We are very capable of handling the whole range of hazardous materials in addition to asbestos, including such items as fly ash from the incinerators and power stations, paints, medical waste, varnishes, oils and sludges. We ship our waste to Italy, Germany, the UK and France. Only Germany accepts to store asbestos coming from another country. We are also involved in the disposal of waste electrical and electronic equipment,” he says.
Mr Broadley explains that when shipped abroad asbestos is landfilled (in Germany), while paints and solvents are incinerated, oils are recovered and recycled and white goods, TVs and computers are dismantled and partly used again.
He explains that company employees are trained in the UK and medically examined every three years. PT Matic, he says, is expanding rapidly in Libya where it services both the multinational oil companies and the national Libyan oil company.