CSB - Andy Blair - Director of Business and Innovation at Upflow

Making livestock feed from greenhouse gases in world-first .

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From the rugby field to the rotary shed.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
It's the Country Sport Breakfast with Brian Kelly on gold
Sport twelve away from eight o'clock Here on gold Sport, Well,
the Central North Island. Muori Trust is partnering with geothermal
experts and New Zealand scientists in a world first project
to develop livestock feed from geothermal gases. Now this is
a four year research project. It'll be a first in

(00:24):
the world to pioneer biomass feedstock production from gases. How
does it all work? When we're going to find out?
Joining us this morning, Andy Blair, director of Business and
Innovation at Upflow.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Morning, Andy got a good morning. How are you good?
Thank you very much excellent.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
First off, are we going to find out about upflow?
Tell me a little bit about your organization Upflow.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Yeah, Upflow. So we are the bridge between deep science
and complex science and making them into commercial reality. So
we shop inside geothermal environments for solutions for the world
and then we put them together and make them commercially viable.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
This is an exciting development just basically as I said,
making livestock feed from greenhouse gases. How does this work?

Speaker 1 (01:14):
And know it's crazy, right, Yes, we're literally making food
from waste gas mission so CO two and methane. So
basically gsimal environments naturally leak CO two and methane just
from the Earth. And what happens is gsimal power stations
basically suck in fluid and they bring the gases with them.
So then we have a point source and we're going

(01:37):
to plug in our buio reactors into those point sources
so the gases can come through, feed our bugs and
then they make biomass.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
That's pretty amazing. This is a world first, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah. Yeah, it's actually to make a commercial product like this. Yeah,
it's leading the world.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Now. I think I mentioned it's a four year research project.
How are you just into it is this year or
are you into year four?

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well into year like twelve or thirteen. So basically this
is capitalizing on some research work that's been going on
for ten years. So this is the commercialization part, the
sort of we're building a pilot plant and techno economic
feasibility study. So we've made the biomass. The buyomass exists,
it's all been proven in a lab and now we're

(02:24):
looking at how to scale it up. So it can
be commercially viable, what market we can put it into,
What does it look like in market? That sort of thing,
So where do you go from here?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Then?

Speaker 1 (02:35):
So from here it's our four years sort of understand that,
understand how much guess we need, how do we look
after the microbes to make the sort of products we want,
And at the end of this we then look at
sort of a demonstration, scale up and then commercial reality.
So we think in ten to twelve years you'll be
able to dial up and just order this product from

(02:57):
a store or online.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Successful. I mean, this could be the start of a
massive new biomass feedstock manufacturing industry for New Zealand, couldn't it.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Well, absolutely, Our New Zealand deployment isn't just one. You know,
we want to plug into GFM or power stations in
New Zealand, maybe ten in New Zealand, but then we
also want to go offshore and go into power stations
that exist in some of the markets that New Zealand
traditionally exports to. So we're looking at a global play here.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
So funding wise, are you getting help from government organizations
as well?

Speaker 1 (03:32):
So this recent funding about that we've got for this
next four years. We've got fifty percent funding from mpi's
ES Triple F Fund and Toehadan North, the project owners.
They are co funding it, and then we'll be looking
at the next stage what that looks like. Obviously there's
some real investment needs to go in, so hopefully the
government will still think it's a cool project and willing

(03:54):
to participate.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
I guess so next time we're driving through the Central
North Island and we see these geothermal places near top
or we can think, hey, there's some amazing research going
on out there.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
You can think green electricity and green food. That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
It's absolutely fantastic. Andy, thank you for joining us today
and explaining it all. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
You're welcome. Shut it.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Andy Blair making livestock feed from greenhouse gases in a
world first research chet. It's pretty mind boggling, really, isn't
it