DAERA awards £4m to first successful Sustainable Utilisation of Livestock Slurry SBRI Phase 2 company
Date published:
BH Estates has been awarded £4million over three years to help Northern Ireland’s agriculture sector reduce excess phosphorus from livestock slurry, as part of the Lough Neagh Action Plan.
The award has been made as part of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs’ (DAERA) Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Phase 2 project under the Sustainable Utilisation of Livestock Slurry (SULS) programme.
While visiting the BH Estates site near Dundonald, Minister Muir said: “This is a significant milestone which delivers on a key action point in the Lough Neagh Report and Action Plan, which I published in July.
“It also has the potential to radically change the way nutrients are managed by the farming community and provide a sustainable future for our agrifood sector and be an excellent example of Green Growth in action, contributing to emissions reductions, environmental improvements and green job opportunities.
“Today’s announcement sees the launch of the first Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) Phase 2 project under the Sustainable Utilisation of Livestock Slurry (SULS) programme. The SULS programme will advance and develop demonstrator sites to process livestock manure/slurry to remove excess phosphorus from the environment.
“I am delighted to see the first contract awarded to BH Estates for their Farm2Export project. BH Estates can now scale up their solution for managing excess phosphorus from livestock slurry and anaerobic digestate. Their consortium has just taken receipt of multiple self-funded large mobile slurry separators which they will put to work on farms and AD plants to produce feedstock for renewable energy and organo mineral fertiliser. Coupled with additional nutrient separation equipment supported by DAERA, this will support reductions in our reliance on fossil fuels, reduce reliance on imported fertilisers and demonstrate the potential to improve water quality if rolled out on a much larger scale.”
SBRI provides the public sector with innovative solutions to problems that will drive improvement and allows suppliers to develop products and services working collaboratively with the public sector, enabling them to develop new skills, expertise and markets.
Jack Blakiston Houston, managing director at BH Estates added: “We are excited to begin our Farm2Export project, under the umbrella of the SULS programme. We look forward to working with DAERA and our consortium partners, and farmers across Northern Ireland and further enable the economically viable movement of agri nutrients. The system we hope to deliver will see a win-win for farming, food processors and the public with regards to nutrient management in both the agri-food and energy sectors in Northern Ireland."
Notes to editors:
- Photo Caption: Minister Muir is pictured with Jack Blakiston Houston at BH Estates.
- For further information about the Small Business Research Initiative visit https://matrixni.org/sbri/
- SULS Phase 2 will also provide funding for equipment to separate post-AD digestate to further extract excess P for export, and to produce other marketable products from digestate such as organo mineral fertiliser, peat free compost and low carbon cement, to increase the economic sustainability of nutrient processing.
- A key target of the SBRI SULS programme, under which BH Estate’s Farm2Export project sits, is to make a significant reduction in on farm nutrient balances by reducing the excess P from slurry by at least 1,000 tonnes per year by the end of year three, with each funded project contributing to this total. The programme will also see further research and development, as well as economic and environmental modelling carried out. The 2020 rePhoKUs report indicated that Northern Ireland has an annual surplus of 6,000 tonnes of P in the phosphorous cycle.
- The project directly follows on from the SBRI Phase 1 pilot stage from 2023 when £600,000 was awarded to six NI companies to develop proof of concept solutions to address excess phosphorus (P), from cattle and pig slurry within NI agriculture. Following the success of the initial project, the Phase 2 has now commenced and further contracts are expected to be signed in the near future.
- One focus of this three-year project will be on funding nutrient separation equipment that will separate slurry on farms to produce a compost like material that is high in P, to be used as a feedstock for anaerobic digestion (AD) to produce renewable biogas.
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- BH Estates is a Northern Irish farming, energy and rural advisory business: www.bhestates.com
- RePhoKUs report RePhoKUs Report (Oct 2020) | Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (afbini.gov.uk)