Environment Minister Magnus Heunick has summoned the Danish Parliament’s environmental spokesmen to an urgent meeting about the containers that a Maersk ship lost during storm Pia, he tells Danish paper Ekstra Bladet.

The meeting will take place on Thursday, and the Minister of the Environment has also told the media that he will summon Maersk to a meeting.

The case is about the 46 containers that the cargo ship Mayview Maersk lost in the Skagerrak on the night of December 22nd.

According to Maersk, four of the containers have drifted ashore, while a salvage vessel is searching for the others.

On Wednesday, cleanup work on the affected beaches began in earnest, and diggers and dumper trucks have been deployed in several places along the North Jutland coast.

But until then, volunteers were responsible for cleaning up, and this is not satisfactory, Heunicke tells Ekstra Bladet.

One of the reasons is that the contents of the containers include medical equipment. This should not be left to volunteers to handle, according to the minister.

However, he will not go so far as to criticize Maersk.

”I have received thorough briefings from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency - there is nothing in those briefings that currently indicates that there have been shortcomings in relation to Maersk’s work.”

”Therefore, it is too early for me as a minister to draw that conclusion,” Heunicke tells Ekstra Bladet.

Maersk has previously announced that it is taking the situation very seriously. The company has said it will cover the costs associated with the cleanup.

Since then, the Danish Fishermen’s Association has announced that it will demand compensation for the damage that may occur to vessels fishing in the area.

Translated using DeepL with additional editing by Catherine Brett.