Select Harvests pilot plant to turn almond waste into fertiliser

Australia’s largest almond producer has found a profitable new use for its shell waste that will also improve its soil health.

Select Harvests has a new plan to turn almond waste into fertiliser, which it hopes will be more profitable than selling it as stock feed.

Australia’s largest almond producer says it has cracked a new technology that will “close the loop” on waste and inputs by producing a high quality fertiliser from almond hulls and shells.

ASX-listed Select Harvests, which holds 9000ha of almond orchards in South Australia, Sunraysia and the NSW Riverina, announced today it will build a pilot plant at its Carina West processing facility near Mildura to transform its almond waste into liquid fertiliser.

General manager Paul Thompson said the technology, which has been part funded through a $190 000 grant from the Victorian government, will allow Select Harvests to capture and re-use valuable nitrogen and potassium from its waste on site.

“We put a lot of effort, water, and fertiliser into our farms to grow a tree and fruit, just to capture the seed,” Mr Thompson said.

“All of the goodness that grows that seed is actually wrapped around it, in the hull and the shell.”

While some of the hulls and shells are composted and re-used, roughly 50,000 metric tonnes annually are sold as cattle feed, Mr Thompson said.

As part of the new process, that stock feed will be diverted to fertiliser production.

A pilot plan has been commissioned for the first quarter of 2022, with agronomy trials planned for April next year.

The new process, which will be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy, will reduce the company’s environmental footprint and will also have a financial upside, Mr Thompson said.

Selling the waste as stockfeed “isn’t particularly profitable”, and producing liquid fertiliser from the waste will save more money than those sales generate, he said.

Select Harvests has been issued a provisional patent for the new technology with a full patent pending. If the process proves to be successful, Mr Thompson said he hoped to license the technology to almond growers in Australia and internationally.

The company has been searching for ways to reuse its organic waste for a number of years. Almond hulls, shells and orchard waste already fuel a biomass boiler and steam turbine at the Carina West plant.