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Gritting company suffers thefts

A gritting company has closed 20 depots because of thieves stealing thousands of pounds worth of salt, including from a site in Darlington, it has been revealed.

Winter maintenance company Gritit has been targeted over the last two weeks and on one occasion its site in Darlington, County Durham, was left with no stock after 28 tonnes of salt was stolen.

Jason Petsch, commercial director at Gritit, said: “The bottom line is salt is relatively useless but at the moment it’s invaluable.

“We have heard that at the moment it’s worth £1,000 a tonne, whereas normally it’s only worth £50 a tonne.”

Gritit has 80 salt depots across the country but it has closed 20 of these because of the thefts.

Mr Petsch said: “We are having to have 24-hour security at some of our remaining depots. We can only assume it was mechanically removed from the Darlington site because there is nothing left. The place was cleared out.

“Where there have been thefts at other depots it has been on a drip-feed basis so they have been stealing a bit at a time.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .