Ballance partners with Yara to pilot lower carbon fertiliser range

Ballance Agri-Nutrients (Ballance) together with Yara, is piloting a lower carbon range of specialty horticultural and arable fertilisers aimed at supporting growers looking to supply global food manufacturers.

Ballance National Corporate Accounts and Technical Services Manager Aaron Stafford says partnerships that require farmers and growers to measure and reduce their carbon footprint are becoming more common in food and fibre exports.

“Some of the world’s largest household grocery brands, from PepsiCo to supermarket chains like Waitrose in the United Kingdom, have committed to partner with growers that can track and reduce their carbon footprint, as they face tighter regulations and reporting requirements that carry across their entire supply chain,” he says.
“This range will contribute to a lower overall carbon footprint, particularly in the premium food and fibre export space where New Zealand tends to occupy.”

Fertiliser plays a crucial role in supporting efficient growth of food and fibre in New Zealand, with around 41 per cent of all of New Zealand’s agricultural exports enabled by fertiliser.
The Yara Climate Choice range of fertilisers are produced either from renewable ammonia (ammonia made using renewable energy) or through carbon capture and storage (CCS), which reduces the manufacturing carbon footprint by up to 70 per cent, compared to the standard Yara range.

Yara Senior Vice President Asia-Pacific Beda Merkelbach says New Zealand will be the first country to launch the range in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Working together across the supply chain with innovative solutions will help cultivate a better future for agriculture and food production. We’ve been working with Ballance for some time to be able to bring this range to New Zealand and they’ve been an incredibly supportive partner,” he says.

Aaron adds while New Zealand agriculture has a good reputation for efficient and sustainable farming practices, our distance from markets like Europe remains a challenge.

“It’s important for New Zealand growers looking to be part of these supply partnerships have the choice and ability to use as many levers as they possibly can to remain competitive,” he says.

“Yara is a global leader in producing lower footprint fertilisers. Their standard range that we import already has some of the cleanest compound NPK fertilisers in the market, thanks to use of catalytic converters in its manufacturing plants which reduces emissions.”   

“The Climate Choice range offers further improvements from that base.”    

Ballance is piloting lower-carbon options of three commonly used horticultural and arable fertilisers; YaraBela CAN, YaraMila Complex and YaraLiva Nitrabor and Aaron says these products are all well-proven and trusted by its customers, being widely used in vegetable and kiwifruit production systems.

Tags: fertilizers