All Episodes

October 14, 2025 7 mins

Liz Ferns & Steve Smith of AB Lime look at recent happenings at the business.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome back to the muster. Time to catch up with
Liz Ferns and Steve Smith, both of ab Lion. We're
catching out this afternoon talking about some pretty cool things
that have been going on with the team there. Liz
and Steve.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Good afternoon, Good afternoon, Good afternoon, Andy.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Liz will talk to you first, having to bring the
boss and to help you out what's going on there.
You're pretty good in the segment happen in the past, Yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Know, I know. Sorry, these things that he does, his projects,
I thought maybe he should he's better to talk to
them about you.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Yeah, fair enough. Now, Steve, you're the one who can
talk about the landfill there at ab Line. Are even
pretty busy in that space by the sounds of it.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, Look, there's always plenty going on with a lanceil.
They're kind of free, technically advanced, and they are a
wee better managing. But you know, there's there's the opportunity,
I suppose, for a lot of innovation and stuff. So
we're yeah, there's sort of you know, some byproducts that
come off the landfill, lentil gas and some of those

(01:13):
kind of things, which are obviously incredibly useful to be
used as a resource. So we've been working away pretty
curiously on Donat.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Obviously the landfill's going on there, I'm sure a bit
about it and the purpose regarding it.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, So, I mean we're just part I suppose of
the Southland's kind of waste infrastructure. So you know, everybody
that's got a curtside bininess, they're in town or you know,
skip business, they're on a farm. You know, they all
of those kind of wastes that are not deemed recycling
or some other clean field type material generally make their

(01:49):
way out to av lime here and we're going to
put a big synthetically lined sort of landfill here and
you know, the ability to take all of those kind
of actually I suppose if you want to call them,
that that are at end of life and somebody who
just wants to get rid of them, so we put
them in in a yeah, fully stifically mind hole here
that hopefully won't affect the environment in the way ever

(02:14):
in the future, and you can get rid of them
on half of our community.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
They were drying the line as well, using the guests
to do that. That's a great initiative.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, Yeah, we've just we've been trialing that actually for
quite a number of years. We probably maybe three or
four years ago. Now we put it in a sort
of trial sort of burner into our limekilns where we
dry the agricultural line. Just recently over the winter we
upgraded that burner and now primarily we can run in

(02:45):
one of our rotary calm driverers solely on landfillness, so
it probably halves our whole usage. So, I mean, you know,
they suppose there's good for two reasons. One is I
don't have to buy coal, which is kind of good
for my account. But on the other side, it's you know,
environmentally this sort of move away from coal and you know,

(03:06):
using a sort of a biogas created by microbes a
sort of deemed pretty environmentally friendly way of doing it too.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Well, it's outside the square thinking as well. Stave putting
a power plant on.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Yeah, yeah, that's actually been really really exciting. I've just
been working on this this week. Actually there's a guy
here from Australia that's commissioning that plant. So yeah, we
turned that on last Thursday. So essentially it's a big
Veep twenty gas engine. It's sixty liters, so it's a engine,

(03:42):
and it's sort of capable of generating a megawatt of electricity,
so you know, we turned that on and sort of
past week and ran sort of over the weekend, and
you know, generated enough power probably for quite a lot
of the sort of local community with pushing it into
to our feed aligne that comes up the road here,

(04:04):
and I don't quite know where the power ends up.
It'll go to some user somewhere. But yeah, I've been
quite proud of that project. It's yes, pretty high tech,
and yeah, it's been really fun.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
I'd imagine it would have been a real hope when
everything started the other day at the opening.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, well it's just more like it's Yeah, it was
just a quiet kind of thing. In fact, the guy
that was commissioning at that it didn't he wasn't confident
that it was going to go first try. He didn't
want too many people standing there because he was going
to be doing his thing. But I was certainly there
and took a video of it. But it was pretty

(04:45):
uneventful to me. He's perfectly honest. The start of modeor
just turned it on like a water tractor engine, and
it started doing its thing. So we started idle for
a while and she was within probably twenty minutes he
was generating a legal lot of power and pushing it
into the grid. So you're pretty uneventful. Actually, to be
perfectly honest, my video would be pretty boring to or watch.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Sounds pretty cool though, local companies once again owned by
farmers doing pretty neat things.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean chiefs oh. I think that's the
thing we don't probably give ourselves a lot of credit
for in Southland, where you know, we have got pretty
innovative kind of ways around the district, and you know,
this is just another thing. I don't think what we're
doing here is probably not very unusual for a landfill.
You know, there is a lot of the explants around
the country that are using electricity. Well, using the landfill

(05:37):
gas to generate electricity pretty common for lentils such as ourselves.
We just haven't had enough gas coming out of the
lentil to probably economically warrant it until now, but certainly
pushing the gas into the lime films is something that's
incredibly efficient. And you know, I don't know of any
other company around the around the New Zealand that's kind

(05:59):
of doing that using it recquiring it like that. It's yeah,
as I say, incredibly efficient and in an excellent way
of handling something that would otherwise actually be quite a
bad greenhouse gare. So Yeah, no, we're pretty proud of
what we.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Do now, Liz, Steve was saying, the Southlanders are understated.
I mean we're not the kind of people to be
going to the pub at five pm and a Friday
drinking decorrees, are we No?

Speaker 3 (06:23):
No, definitely not.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
So we looked forward to what's happening in the pipeline
with Aby Lime Next with you guys, we'll catch up
sooner than Lake later on. Take it a few things
on the horizon.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Yeah, we've got our primary coming up, so I'm hoping
to catch up with you again in a couple of
weeks Andy, and we'll discuss that.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
How good is it just to see a bit of
growth occurring as well after the last six weeks we
can actually carry on with the season now.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
Right, Yeah, the ground conditions are starting to come right
and we've got a lime shed full so we're about
to train into it. So that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
Hey, Liz Ferans and Steve Smith out of ab liking
gradual fantastic to see this initiative up and running and
appreciated the time on the Master this afternoon as always perfect.
Thank you Thanky, Liz Ferns and Steve Smith out of
a B line cool initiative that putting their own power plantern.
Lynn Burry is up next and before the end of

(07:18):
the yeur Olivia Weatherburn talking International Rural Women's Day
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.

24/7 News: The Latest

24/7 News: The Latest

The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.