Farming, energy and rural advisory business, BH Estates, has been awarded £4 million by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs’ (DAERA) for a three year project that aims to reduce excess phosphorus from livestock slurry in Northern Ireland.
The award, announced today (Monday, October 14) has been made as part of DAERA’s Sustainable Utilisation of Livestock Slurry (SULS) programme, which is part of the Lough Neagh Action Plan.
A recent study by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) confirmed that Lough Neagh was ‘hypertrophic’ which is the worst category of waterway nutrient pollution, “indicative of decades of agricultural, industrial and domestic runoff”.
The key finding and recommendation from study was that reducing agricultural runoff and discharge from human wastewater treatment needed to be a top priority for all stakeholders including government.
According to NI’s Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Minister Andrew Muir, the £4 million award to BH Estates “is a significant milestone which delivers on a key action point in the Lough Neagh Report and Action Plan”.
MInister Muir said the SULS programme “will advance and develop demonstrator sites to process livestock manure/slurry to remove excess phosphorus from the environment”.
Under SULS funding is available for equipment to separate post-anaerobic digestion (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.
DAERA
According to DAERA a key target of the 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 at the end of three years.
Minister Muir said: “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.”
According to Jack Blakiston Houston, managing director at BH Estates, the business is excited to get its Farm2Export project underway.
“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,” he added.
