Tag: Marcus Pickens

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Winery waste problem a zero-carbon opportunity

Penny Wardle, Stuff | March 01, 2024

Steve Brennan of The Green Circle shows how marc left over from winemaking will be made into biochar.PENNY WARDLE / MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS
Steve Brennan of The Green Circle shows how marc left over from winemaking will be made into biochar.
PENNY WARDLE / MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS

The Green Circle, a Blenheim startup company, and Yealands Wine are piloting a method to convert grape waste into 80% pure carbon.

The resulting product, biochar, held up to four times its weight in moisture, provided a home for soil microbes, boosted the value of compost and fertiliser, and could be added to animal feed.

As part of last week’s Climate Action Week Marlborough programme, a demonstration at the Yealands plant near Seddon showed forestry wood-waste and grapevine stumps being fed into one end of a machine and biochar being spat out the other.

The biochar, a charcoal-like substance, was slightly damp from moisture added to reduce its temperature from as high as 1000C.

Brennan encourages people to see, touch and interact with the biochar product.PENNY WARDLE / MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS
Brennan encourages people to see, touch and interact with the biochar product.
PENNY WARDLE / MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS

The Green Circle founder and director Steve Brennan and chief executive David Savidan said the machine being used for the pilot would dry marc at Yealands this vintage.

Marc is the seeds, skins and stalks left behind when wine is made.

“As much as possible” would be converted to biochar using pyrolysis, which is the burning of organic material at super-hot temperatures with no oxygen.

The biggest challenge would be scaling up to use available waste, improve efficiency and make biochar affordable, Brennan said.

Depending on the size and moisture content of material being fed in, an average of 20 tonnes could be processed per day, Savidan later told the Marlborough Express.

This time next year, the company planned to have several machines with capacity to process 15,000 to 20,000 tonnes. These would be based at a site central to vineyards, ideally in Renwick or Riverlands.

Last year, about 393,865 tonnes of grapes were harvested in Marlborough, according to Marcus Pickens of Wine Marlborough.

About 20%, or almost 80,000 tonnes, of that volume was marc.

Brennan said the 6 million or so vine trunks that were removed from Marlborough vineyards each year and 40,000 to 50,000 tonnes of prunings could also undergo pyrolysis.

Wine companies could dig biochar back into vineyards to sequester carbon for a zero footprint, he suggested.

However, there was not yet New Zealand demand for high-carbon biochar, Savidan said. The Green Circle’s business plan included researching local benefits that would later be shared.

Yealands sustainability manager Andrée Piddington, right, talks about biochar benefits with, from left, Heather Turnbull, John Baldridge and Tracy Taylor.PENNY WARDLE / MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS
Yealands sustainability manager Andrée Piddington, right, talks about biochar benefits with, from left, Heather Turnbull, John Baldridge and Tracy Taylor.
PENNY WARDLE / MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS

Yealands sustainability manager Andrée Piddington said the winemaker was keen for solutions because composting marc could cause leachate runoff.

Even if The Green Circle did nothing but dry marc, she would be happy, Piddington said. It could be stored with no risk of runoff and then sold as livestock feed.

Yealands was planning a trial in which biochar would be added to compost and then applied to soil.

Digging biochar into the ground to lock in carbon was appealing but not practical among the posts and wires of established vineyards, Piddington said. This could be possible as new areas were developed or old areas replaced.

Savidan said The Green Circle would charge clients to process their grape marc, at the cost of disposal. They could buy biochar at discounted rates.

Checking a handful of biochar are, from left, Nick Gerritsen, Gavin Beattie from Port Marlborough, and David Savidan of The Green Circle.PENNY WARDLE / MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS
Checking a handful of biochar are, from left, Nick Gerritsen, Gavin Beattie from Port Marlborough, and David Savidan of The Green Circle.
PENNY WARDLE / MARLBOROUGH EXPRESS

The company was the sole New Zealand distributor of its pyrolysis machine, bought from an Australian manufacturer that planned to take the technology global, Savidan said. The Green Circle designed and owned the New Zealand-made drier.

The company was also talking with Marlborough forest and aquaculture companies, Savidan said. OneFortyOne was looking into transforming wood waste, while New Zealand King Salmon was considering turning dead fish into soil stimulants.

In June 2020, the Marlborough District Council, Massey University and the Ministry for the Environment analysed five options for repurposing grape marc.

In their report, biochar was said to deliver “far and away the best environmental outcome. Going down the biochar route means the industry potentially has the opportunity to offset the emissions from all other parts of the production and supply chain.”

– Marlborough Express

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Sauvignon blanc land in Marlborough sells for over $400,000 per hectare, a 60% increase on previous highs

Gerhard Uys, Stuff | Jul 31 2023

Sauvignon blanc grapes at Alapa Vineyard Services in Blenheim.
Sauvignon blanc grapes at Alapa Vineyard Services in Blenheim.

Prices for sauvignon blanc vineyards in Marlborough have topped $400,000 per hectare this year, up by almost 60% on past record, the Real Estate Institute says.

Andy Poswillo​, director for Colliers in Marlborough said it was a big jump from the $270,000 per hectare that the best vineyards fetched for a long time.

A number of factors influenced the price, he said.

The best vineyards delivered consistent high-quality yields, Poswillo said.

The land that attracted the most interest was not under any contractual obligations and buyers could “do what they wanted with the fruit,” he said.

Investors looked at the rate of return and the value of a vineyard came down to yield and location, he said.

Water availability and security was a major contributor to the value of land.

The price per tonnes of grapes made land attractive, he said.

Sauvignon blanc grapes harvested recently sold for up to $2200 per tonne, Poswillo said.

Real Estate Institute rural spokesperson Shane O’Brien said these sales were the only “bright spot” in the rural property market as sales continued to decline compared to last year.

The institute’s data showed there were 166 fewer farm sales for the three months ended May than for the same three months ended May 2022.

“The reduced number of sales is impacted by buyers continuing to take a wait-and-see approach to buying amidst the backdrop of higher interest rates, farm expenses increasing and lower farm incomes off the back of adverse weather and challenging economic conditions,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien said the sale of two established vineyards was at a price per hectare never seen before.

“In Marlborough sales are now being reported at record levels for good quality sauvignon blanc land and more land is being acquired for further development in grapes,” he said.

The recent uptick in wine exports and free-trade agreement with the UK gave the industry “renewed confidence,” O’Brien said.

Chief executive of New Zealand Winegrowers Philip Gregan said earlier this month wine exports for the year to May were worth $2.4 billion, up 25% on last year.

Sarah Wilson, general manager for advocacy at New Zealand Winegrowers, said under the UK free-trade agreement technical barriers to trade would be removed, and certification and labelling requirements minimised.

Marcus Pickens, general manager for Wine Marlborough, said the phenomenon of good sales for sauvignon blanc vineyards was not new, with ongoing growth in the industry for the last 30 years.

“It’s a continuation of the growth trajectory.

“There could have been an uptick and land conversion into viticulture. The world discovered sauvignon blanc in the 1980s and there’s been growing demand ever since. Other varieties grow very well, but sauvignon blanc gets all the attention,” Pickens said.

Marlborough had “nice warm days” in the growing season and “quite cold nights which was good for flavour development,” he said.

Marcus Pickens says sauvignon blanc gets all the attention in New Zealand.
Marcus Pickens says sauvignon blanc gets all the attention in New Zealand.

Of Marlborough’s about 30,000 hectares of vineyards, about 24,000ha was planted to Sauvignon Blanc, Pickens said.

The vineyard area grew by 29% in the last 10 years, but it was hard to say if this trend would continue, he said.

Marlborough had a record harvest last year, after a small harvest in 2021 brought about by poor fruit set, he said.

This year’s harvest was marginally less than last year because of an abnormal summer, Pickens said.

“As a wine industry we have been careful to map planting planning with consumption demand as we do not want to oversupply the market, just grow our premium offering at the same pace as demand grows,” Pickens said.

The median price per hectare for dairy farms for the three months ended June this year was up 3.1% compared to last year, for finishing farms it was down 4.8%, up 5.3% for grazing farms and down by 25% for horticulture, Real Estate Institute data showed.

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