Article - Silver Fern Farms

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Keeping It Clean

Thu, 26/11/2009 2:14:00 p.m.

The product we produce is about as natural and pure as it can get. Our challenge - as the nation's largest processor of red meat products - is to minimize our ecological footprint. It's why we commit millions of dollars each year to enable the company to operate in a more sustainable manner, while keeping ahead of the many regulatory elements of compliance and customer requirements implicit in a company of this size.

It's why we recently commissioned an award winning bio-fuel boiler at our largest plant, reducing coal requirements by 1,300 tonnes and cutting carbon dioxide emissions by more than 2,000 tonnes every year
It's why we have built and use artificial wetlands at Shannon and Te Aroha to polish surface run off effluent from land based effluent sites
It's why we have introduced riparian 'buffer zones' at several of our sites to allow endemic vegetation to grow, improving quality of surface water run off
It's why we are trialling commercial crops such as grass, Lucerne and hemp to remove nutrients from land-based effluent treatment sites at Fairton, Takapau and Pareora
It's also why we are trialling land filtration trenches at those sites to provide natural treatment and filtering activity before it hits the sea.