Blantyre Farms boosts bioenergy to realise financial and environmental savings

August 2021

Blantyre Farms, a mixed farming and livestock business situated near Young in New South Wales, produces 40,000 pigs each year, as well as wheat, barley, canola, beef, wool and lamb. The intensive pig farming means that electricity is one of the farms largest operational expenses.

Acknowledging this, Blantyre Farms worked with Australian Pork Limited to implement a process where the effluent from the piggery is flushed into covered anaerobic ponds. Once there, the emissions are captured and refined into methane that runs several generators to provide electricity and heating for the piggery, and any excess electricity is sold back into the grid.

The biogas production saves the business approximately $350,000 per annum in power and gas bills, and brings in a further $68,000 from excess power sold back into the grid. As an added bonus, the upgrade has reduced methane emissions by over 100,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

But the savings don’t stop there: the farm has also implemented a strategy of using food waste from food manufacturers as pig feed. And with 70 – 80 per cent of the pigs’ feed now coming from food waste, Blantyre Farms has protected itself from volatile grain prices whilst also diverting 8,000 tonnes of waste food from landfill each year.

The remaining feedstock for the pigs is being sourced from grain on the farm that is fertilised with the manure used for the biogas production, which further reduces costs by minimising the purchase of synthetic fertiliser. Taken together, these innovative energy and sustainability practices have dramatically increased the farm’s productivity and profitability.

Find this case study on page 28 of Navigating a dynamic energy landscape: a briefing for farms.