Sparkle Chooses Oceanic Environmental Cables to Recycle Subsea Cables
By Simon Dux, Mobile Europe
January 15, 2025
The Mediterranean has several decommissioned subsea cables and TIM’s international division has decided to do something about it
TIM’s international wholesale provider Sparkle has signed an agreement with Hamburg-based Oceanic Environmental Cables (OEC) for the recovery and recycling of multiple unused subsea telecom cables.
Under the agreement, OEC will acquire from Sparkle more than 22,000km of telegraph – yes, that old – coaxial and fibre optic subsea cables laid in the Mediterranean. It is estimated this will save more than 35,000 tons of CO2e through secondary material manufacturing reuse.
Sparkle’s out-of-service submarine cables will be taken from the seabed and transported to the facilities of OEC and its partners. which will dismantle, separate, clean, and analyse the various components (optical fibre, copper, steel, aluminium, HDPE, and LDPE) until they are processed into high-quality “regranulates”. OEC will then return the materials to industrial use as secondary raw materials.
The company claims to have developed a unique method of dismantling them with approximately 1% waste, ensuring all materials are upcycled and fed back into industrial use as secondary raw materials.
Turnkey service
The service is fully managed. OEC takes over shore-end leases, permits and bonds, so owners do not have ongoing liabilities with a redundant system, such as shore-end manholes. The service includes desk top studies, permits and marine licences, environmental assessment reports and cable recovery plans. OEC clears spares depots too.
The company has its own vessels and in-house designed recovery equipment. It claims it can recover any submarine cable from any depth in any ocean or sea. The company also performs Pre-Lay Grapnel Runs (PLGR) and other cable maintenance services like end-seal solutions.
OEC’s vessels can transport new cable systems if rip and replace is required. The company said it has successfully recovered more than 25,000km of cable and recently acquired more than 80,000km of out-of-service cables from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and the Mediterranean sea.