St. Modwen 30 Years : A Generation of Regeneration 1 | Page 10

ST. MODWEN | A GENERATION OF REGENERATION | COED DARCY, SOUTH WALES

Coed Darcy, South Wales
The Anglo Persian Oil Company established
an oil refinery in Llandarcy, South Wales,
in 1918 when Winston Churchill, the then
minister for munitions, realised the strategic
national importance of being able to refine
crude oil on home territory.
Llandarcy was chosen because of its proximity
to Swansea docks, where crude oil could be
transported by sea from the Middle East. During
more than 70 years of industrial production,
Llandarcy rose, under the control British
Petroleum (BP), to become one of the largest
employers in Wales with over 2,600 workers. In
the second World War it withstood attempts by
the German Luftwaffe to destroy it. By the time
the plant had started to shut down in the mid1980s, however, it had also become one of the
most devastatingly polluted sites in Europe.
When it finally closed in 1998, BP’s Llandarcy Oil
refinery’s legacy included 1,060 acres of land
heavily polluted with the by-products of 70 years
of intense production in processing hydrocarbons.
Never a company to shrink from a challenge,
St. Modwen acquired the Llandarcy site in 2008
after a four year long bid process, run by BP,
Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council and
the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community.
St. Modwen immediately turned it into one of
Europe’s biggest and most successful
remediation projects.
Neil Williams, Construction Manager and
St. Modwen’s “head of muck”, speaking to the
Financial Times explained how the timing of the
start on site was very fortuitous: “We were getting

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going just as the remediation of the Olympics
site in London was finishing in 2008/09,” he said.
“That allowed us to procure skilled contractors
and specialist equipment more readily than would
normally have been the case.”
Chemical plants leave highly toxic compounds
but this site was heavily contaminated with filth –
hydrocarbon wastes are not compatible with the
development of a new community.
St. Modwen brought in leading specialist
companies including Celtic, Hydrock and Hawk,
as well as WS Atkins who acted as engineering
consultants while introducing ground-breaking
(literally) technologies to transform the site.
Techniques never before seen in the UK were
used to treat the different types of oily residue.
Heavy oils that had sunk to the bottom of ponds
and lagoons, forming a deep layer of sludge,
received a de-watering treatment. A specialist
dredging team pumped 60,000 cubic metres of
oily sludge up into Geotubes – huge cylinders
developed in the Netherlands.
The Geotubes’ fabric enabled most of the
water to drain out of the sludge. This left a more
concentrated material with a consistency like peat,
to which the team added “cement bypass dust”,
a waste product of cement manufacturing.

“

It withstood attempts by
the German Luftwaffe to
destroy it. By the time
the plant had started to
shut down in the mid1980s, however, it had also
become one of the most
devastatingly polluted sites
in Europe.
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