The project listed here are a snapshot of what we have done over the years, projects are listed in year order, latest ones first, older ones last.
A snap shot of a project may give you a quick way to establish if any of our make farming ezy product solutions would work for you. We can also put you in contact with the farmer related to the project if you feel its beneficial to have a chat.
Future proof effluent storage
Year Completed: 2022
Location:
Winton ( SI)
Objective:
To store cowhouse and dairy shed effluent on high water table soils.
Combat future Greenhouse issues
Solution:
Ecobag 4000 Cube fully enclosed storage, no crusting, no Nutrient N loss, no water ingress. Store 750 mm above embankment.
Maintenance critical for cow wellbeing in housing systems
Year Completed: 2022
Location:
South Island
Objective:
Keep our clients and their valuable cows accommodated in the best possible dairy housing systems
Solution:
Many of the Technipharm cowhouses have now been in active duty for up to 10 years and most have received little maintenance in that time other than wear and general care replacememnt parts. Keepin effleunt moving is a big task, one cowhouse has had their sxcrapers run 240.000 Km since commisioning ! we hat to think how much sludge that represent !
Presto shed Orchard for Team Shelter
Year Completed: 2022
Location:
Southern Cross Orchards Pyes Pa (Tauranga )
Objective:
Provide for easy access shelter for people and gear. Ideally re locatuion should be easy and possible if needed in future
Solution:
Presto shed 6 by 6 with coloursteel roof and driven in ground anchors to allow for easy relocation . Level metal/ rock pad provided by client
350 Cube Effluent Storage
Year Completed: 2021
Location:
Reporoa area
Objective:
provide easy care storage bit further awau from the dairy to irrigate farm paddocks further afield
Solution:
350 Cube round effluent storage with Flecitank Round
8000 Cube Ecobag Nutrient Capture and Re Use
Largest totally enclosed effluent system in NZ
Year Completed: 2021
Location:
Otautau
Objective:
To store all cowhouse effluent over winter and early spring and ability to use this on farm as natural fertliser and organic matter. Wageningen (NL) research indicated cowhouse effluent means 50% of nutrients are available straight away, the other 50% is slow release. Soil carbons in the form of organic matter is build up over time.
Solution:
8000 Cube enclosed Ecobag Nutrient capture and storage system. This system is fully approved by the Southland Regional council. A new standard in non crusting, none smelling storage is now set.
Instalation completed Feb 2021
Client Testimonial:
“The big benefit is there is no volatilisation of nitrogen as methane, as there is no contact with air so the slurry we’re spreading on to the farm from the Ecobag™ is higher in nutrients.”
Headline: Effluent - it’s in the bag
By Karen Trebilcock
Southland dairy farmer Abe de Wolde installed his first Ecobag Effluent Storage System in New Zealand for the storage of wintering barn slurry last year.
“They’re well used and well regarded in Europe but this was a first for New Zealand,” he sAYS.
And he’s so impressed he’s installing a second one in mid-January at a new wintering barn he’s building.
The 45-metre by 45m bladder, supplied in NZ by Technipharm, is 4.8m deep, and can hold 8000 cubic metres of effluent. It sits in the ground and when full is 75cm above the surface of the land.
As the effluent is not exposed to the environment there is no crusting, no odour and it’s completely safe.
“You can walk over it, there are no worries about anyone falling in.
“The big benefit is there is no volatilisation of nitrogen as methane, as there is no contact with air so the slurry we’re spreading on to the farm from the Ecobag ™is higher in nutrients.
“Our slurry is giving off very little methane and nitrous oxide so it’s good for us and good for nature.”
Abe’s Woldwide Dairy Group milks 4200 cows on five dairy farms near Winton.
The 2300 hectares produces about 2.5 million kg of milksolids a year from the mainly Friesian cows which have a mix of NZ and Dutch genetics.
Abe and his wife Anita moved to NZ from Holland in 1992 after milking 40 cows there on 26ha. They were one of the first farming families to convert sheep farms into dairy in Western Southland.
Right from the start they saw the possibilities of bringing European technology and farming systems to Southland.
“It’s our goal to combine the best farming systems from around the world to produce food more efficiently,” Abe said.
Very soon their first dairy farm had a 625 free-stall wintering barn built on it.
Now cows on four of their five farms go in the wintering barns at night in April and May, extending the round so milking can continue through until the end of the season.
Then they are in them fulltime in June and July with the cows milked until they are sixty days away from their expected calving.
Some of the barns are also used for calving in August and September.
Automatically scrapers travel the length of the barns eight to 10 times a day with no water added but the slurry still contains enough moisture for it to be spread when soil conditions are right.
And Technipharm’s Ecobag helps.
“As the effluent is completely enclosed it doesn’t dry out but also rain can’t get in so we don’t have more slurry than we need to spread on our paddocks.”
A 18kw stirrer keeps the contents from separating.
“It goes from about two until three in the morning, well I hope it’s going – no one is awake to hear it.”
He said regional council Environment Southland was supportive.
“The Ecobag came with very good instructions and specifications so they could see that it met all of the consent requirements.”
Effluent is spread mainly on silage paddocks using either a slurry tanker on an umbilical when soil moisture conditions allow which hasn’t been easy these past few months in Southland.
“We’ve had the most horrendous Spring, the worst we have known. It’s been very wet and very cold but there have been a few small windows when we have been able to spread effluent on safely.”
And he’s taken the scraping technology from the wintering barns into two of the dairies.
Instead of washing the yard, the most hated end-of-milking chore by far, it is scraped automatically.
“We wash inside the dairy and the two or three metres into the yard but the rest is scraped.
“A dairy cow produces one and a half litres of effluent on average every milking but it can take another 50 litres to wash that away per cow.
“That is a lot of clean water that you have to store and pump and then get rid of afterwards.
“And why turn clean water into effluent if you don’t have to?”
Lowering the environmental impact on all five dairy farms as much as possible has always been the goal for Woldwide Dairy Group and effluent management is a key part of it.
With good practices, and the right technology such as the Ecobag, the amount of nutrients entering Southland’s waterways are lessened but also less fertiliser needs to go on to grow the pasture and forage crops to feed Woldwide’s cows.
“Because we don’t lose the nitrogen through methane loss with the Ecobag, it means the effluent we’re putting on is high in nutrients which is exactly what we need.”
Replacement old Pond to new Bladder
Year Completed: 2021
Location:
Katikati
Objective:
The old pond done its dash, leaking and silted up a new approach was needed
Smell and weedcontrol also issues close to the Dairy
Solution:
A 800 Cube round Flexitank was installed just below the existing pond on a new formed level platform
2000 Cube Ecobag Nutrient Capture
Year Completed: 2020
Location:
Te Poi
Objective:
To store nutrients for beneficial seasonal determined use for Maize and pasture potential. Flood wash to feed pad utilizing existing pump and collection pond feed pad.
Solution:
Ecobag 2000 cube totally contained effluent nutrient storage. Existing Dungbuster yard washing system in place for reduced shed water usage and time savings.
Client Testimonial:
Its been great this spring, nothing to worry about which means we been able to concentrate on calving. With all nutrients ready to be used for more grass growth later in spring
Effluent Storage
Year Completed: 2020
Location:
Te Awamutu
Objective:
This farm is close to houses and requires gentle management to ensure farmers and neighbours can live in Harmony. The farmer was not interested in digging a hole and have this close his house either.
Solution:
500 Cube Flexitank Round on carved out platform so no visual barrier to the house and no smell for farm and residents allike . Simple and clean.... we make farming ezy
Year Completed: 2020
Location: Whakatane
Objective:
Create a sustainable long term solution for capturing nutrients and re using these efficiently on farm
Solution:
Enclosed effluent storage system, using existing sump and pump for distribution to pasture. Ecobag drain to sump allows for longer term storage and use effluent when appropriate and beneficial to pasture
Year Completed: 2020
Location: Te Poi
Objective:
Provide additional storage for nutrients for use at times beneficial to the farm system. PTO pump to pump further way to paddocks not having benefitted from Effluent applications in the past
Solution:
Flexitank Round 1000 Cube placed below the Dairy for gravity feed to storage. PTO pump directly connected to the Flexitank Round to pump to further away paddocks
Effluent Storage for Hybrid Farm
Year Completed: 2019
Location:
Ohaupo
Objective:
Extra storage on small strip of non-utilised land next to dairy housing.
Solution:
Customised Flexitank with rounded ends and narrow width.
Year Completed: 2019
Location: Cambridge Road Ohaupo
Objective:
Effluent storage which would use a piece of unused land and ideally would use all existing infrastructure ( sump and pump)
Solution:
Flexitank Round 1000 Cube bladder close to dairy and existing sump interconnecting with existing pump
Effluent storage high rainfall area
Year Completed: 2018
Location:
Mamakus Tauranga/Rotorua
Objective:
To provide 2000 Cube storage for new dairy in high rain fall area.
Open pond system would require double the storage and significant more pumping cost
Solution:
2000 Cube totally enclosed ECOBAG nutrient capture system
Client Testimonial:
Available on request
Effluent storage high rainfall area
Year Completed: 2018
Location:
Mamakus Tauranga/Rotorua
Objective:
To provide 2000 Cube storage for new dairy in high rain fall area.
Open pond system would require double the storage and significant more pumping cost
Solution:
2000 Cube totally enclosed ECOBAG nutrient capture system
Client Testimonial:
Effluent Storage In High Rainfall Area
Year Completed: 2018
Location:
Okato (Taranaki)
Objective:
This new diary development is in a high rainfall area on the slopes of the mountain. 3.5 meters of rain would make any open pond obsolete before the cows are milked. Greenwash was also a desireable environmental responsible choice to be incorporated.
Solution:
Closed Effluent storage 3000 Cube with Ecobag, Greenwash dungbuster in the yard.
Year Completed: 2016
Location: Morrinsville ( David Sing)
Objective:
To utilise greenwash water from bio digester
Solution:
Greenwash Dual core Dungbuster™ system for both greenwash and clean wash when required
Stirring 12000 Cube of Cowhouse Effluent
Year Completed: 2013
Location:
Leeston
Objective:
12000 Cube of effluent is a lot of effluent in any ones terms, but when it contains high solids its even more challenging. Storing requirements for up to 7 months and maintaining an homeginised consistancy for pumping and dribble boom distribtion
Solution:
3 times 22 Kw Eisele High Performance Stirrers strategically placed and with ability to change level height of stirring so all levels of the pond can be stirred and mixed properly
Client Testimonial:
Available on request, as of Dec 2020 the stirrers have not been touched for maintenance other then oil changes.