Investigators Trace Hazardous Waste Shipments Halted At Sea To Albania – Analysis
By Besar Likmeta and Edmond Hoxhaj
When port authorities in Singapore halted shipments of suspected hazardous waste from Albania, prosecutors traced it to the country’s sole steel producer, run by a Turkish company. But amid a flurry of denials, the truth about the suspicious shipments has proved hard to establish.
In early August, a US-based environmental organisation called Basel Action Network, or BAN, issued an alert over a 175-tonne container ship that had disappeared from radars while sailing off the coast of South Africa, often a sign that a vessel’s transponders have been turned off.
BAN cited a whistleblower as saying that the ship was one of two owned by the Danish international shipping company Maersk Line carrying a total of 102 containers of electric arc furnace dust – a waste by-product rich in heavy metals – from the Albanian port of Durres to Thailand.
Electric arc furnace dust, typically a byproduct of steelmaking, is considered hazardous waste and as such its transport is subject to strict conditions, none of which were met in the case of the two ships and a third identified by BAN as leaving Albania and which was blocked at customs in Fangcheng, China, in March.
According to BAN, the two Maersk Line ships were stopped in Singapore in August and will be returned to Durres, where prosecutors have already begun asking questions.
According to information from the case file, obtained by BIRN, the prosecutors have identified the Albanian firm Sokolaj Sh.p.k, owned by Gjovana Sokolaj, as the exporter of the containers and believe the contents came from Kurum International, the Turkish operator of parts of the former communist-era Metallurgical Combine in Elbasan in central Albania.
Kurum operates electric arc furnaces producing steel for the construction industry, employing hundreds of people in Elbasan.
Information gathered by the prosecutors, and seen by BIRN, show that GS Minerals d.o.o., registered in the Croatian port city of Rijeka, bought the dust from Sokolaj Sh.p.k., despite the fact that both companies are owned by the Sokolaj family.
Jim Puckett, the executive director of BAN, said a shipment of such waste to a country such as Thailand – which has no proven capacities for recycling waste – raised serious questions.
“It’s a very large shipment and somebody is going through a lot of trouble to hide it,” Puckett told BIRN by telephone from Seattle in the US.
Kurum International did not respond to a request for comment for this story, but in a statement on August 21, the company dismissed media speculation that it, as the only operator of electric arc furnaces in the country, was behind the shipment.
“Kurum International has never exported dangerous waste and this time too, this shipment doesn’t belong to Kurum,” the company said, without actually specifying whether or not the suspected waste originated in Kurum’s furnaces regardless of who exported it.
Customs authority adds to confusion
While prosecutors in Durres have pointed the finger at Kurum, Albania’s customs service said in a statement on August 21 – the same day as the Kurum denial – that the containers in fact contained zinc concentrates from Kosovo, not Albania, and named the exporter as ‘Apelbaum sh.p.k’. Albania was just a transit country, it said.
‘Apelbaum sh.p.k’ does not exist in Kosovo, but ‘Apfelbaum sh.p.k’ does.
Apfelbaum director Arten Bajrushi said the company was only involved in the shipment blocked in March in Fangcheng in China, but that the contents were zinc ore from the Trepce/Trepca mining complex in northern Kosovo, not electric arc furnace dust.
“We do not export dust from the metallurgical industry but zinc ores,” Bajrushi said. “We have been doing this since 2017. Clearly, Albanian customs hit us in order to distract attention from what’s going on.”
Puckett disputed the claims concerning the cargo on the ship to China, saying it contained more than eight per cent lead, meaning it is classified as waste.
A.P. Moller-Maersk, the global shipping company behind Maersk Line, said the containers headed to Thailand had been loaded onto its ships in the Italian port of Trieste after being picked up by another shipping company in Durres.
“None of these containers has been declared as containing hazardous waste,” the company told BAN. “If these would have been declared as such, Maersk would have refused to ship them.”
The Albanian government also denied any responsibility and dismissed accusations that the state failed to carry out adequate checks of the cargo.
“It is the obligation of the exporter and the importer to declare their shipment as dangerous or non-dangerous,” the ministry of infrastructure and energy and the ministry of environment said in a joint statement, adding: “It would be reasonable to wait for the results of the investigation.”
Kurum a major producer of hazardous dust
The ‘Basel’ in Basel Action Network is a reference to the 1989 Basel Convention, officially known as the Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.
The convention does not ban the export of hazardous waste from countries, such as Albania, that are not members of the European Union or Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, but it imposes strict rules on how such waste can be exported. Albania, as a signatory of the Basel Convention, must meet certain conditions.
One is that for waste such as electric arc furnace dust to be exported, Albanian authorities need first to see a permit from the destination country issued to the exporter, as well as permits from any transit countries.
The permit must specify the type and quantity of hazardous waste, the final destination and the treatment method. The waste can be exported only if will be adequately treated in the destination country. If members of the Convention know that the destination country – in this case, Thailand – does not have the capacity to process the waste, they must refuse to issue an export licence.
According to its own monitoring reports, submitted to the state and obtained by BIRN via a Freedom of Information request, just in the period April-June 2021, Kurum produced 2,500 tonnes of dust classified as hazardous zinc oxide.
It is not clear what Kurum did with all of it.
Since 2022, some of the waste has been recycled by an Albanian-Chinese company called Alliance Resources, but it does not have the capacity for all of Kurum’s dust. Once processed, the waste can be exported to the EU and other countries, said Erdest Nushi, who is listed in the Albanian business registry as the company contact.
“Our capacities are limited,” Nushi told BIRN. “In nine months we can process some 2,500 tonnes. Kurum produces much more than that.”
According to an investigation by Durres police, Kurum sold some 2,800 tonnes to Sokolaj sh.pk in October and November 2023.
Gjovana Sokolaj, the owner, told the investigators that some 102 containers had been filled with what she called ‘iron oxide’. Sokolaj sh.p.k paid Kurum $41,000 before selling the waste to its sister company, GS Minerals d.o.o., for $141,000. The containers left Durres, destination Thailand, on July 4, 2024.
Almost a month later, Sokolaj received word from the shipping company that the containers would be sent back to Durres because, she told police, “the Port of Singapore refused to process them, believing they contained toxic material”.
“I replied that the merchandise is iron oxide and Sokolaj sh.p.k. and Kurum Sh.a. have done an analysis,” police documents quote her as saying. “There is no toxic waste there.”
GS Minerals, however, does deal in electric arc furnace dust, offering it for sale via online ads.
Sokolaj did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
‘Fully cooperating’
The German company that operates the mineral terminal in Durres port, EMS Albanian Port Operator sh.p.k, told BIRN it was cooperating fully with authorities concerning the suspect shipments to Thailand.
It said that, according to its data, the terminal had not processed electric arc furnace dust for the last five years.
“We are aware of the allegations related to electric arc furnace dust,” the company said. “We are fully collaborating with the authorities and have provided to them any information or document we have.”
Maersk also said that it was working to return the suspect containers to Albania.
“Due to the speculation about the content of these containers, Maersk will hand the containers over to the shipping line which has booked and is responsible for the containers in question,” the company said in a statement on August 14.
BAN applauded Maersk’s efforts but said “the job is not done”.
“Earlier this year, Maersk delivered a similar load of waste to China which must also come back,” BAN said. “Further, the company needs to put measures in place to prevent their ships from moving hazardous waste, electronic waste, and plastic wastes to developing countries in the future.”