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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-06-07 Daily Xml
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TARAC TECHNOLOGIES

Mr VENNING (Schubert) (15:18): I want to support the urgent call by South Australian farmers for the government to allow the supply of cheaper mouse baits, and I note the minister is here. The shadow minister raised this issue in the house on the last sitting day. I urgently join the call for the minister to allow farmers to buy zinc phosphide and to be able to mix it themselves using their own grain.

Some farmers have spent in excess of $60,000 on mouse baits; some cannot even get the product, which is called Mouseoff. What is happening is that farmers are mixing their own potions out of necessity, with much more environmental damage. Zinc phosphide has almost zero off-target damage—not so for most of the alternatives. Also, farmers are burning their paddocks, causing other environmental problems such as smoke pollution. So, minister for primary industries, please enable farmers to immediately purchase the zinc phosphide themselves to save money, to save the environment and to save our crops.

On a positive note, in the last two months I have been fortunate to receive two tours of Tarac Technologies' facility and its Beckwith Park site in Nuriootpa. The first tour was led by the Chairman of Tarac, Mr Fraser Ainsworth; CEO of Tarac Technologies, Mr Chris Zajac; and, CEO of Beckwith Park, Mr Jeremy Blanks. On the second tour in the Barossa, I was pleased to host the Minister for Environment and Conservation (Hon. Paul Caica) to join me in a tour of the sites. Again, Chris and Jeremy accompanied us, providing an excellent summary of all they have to offer. I was very impressed with both facilities, and I think the minister was too. They are an absolute asset to the Barossa region and to the state generally, and successful examples of an innovative and environmentally sustainable business. It was quite enlightening.

Tarac Technologies was established in 1930 and currently employs 60 staff, with an extra 20 casuals working during vintage. Tarac has four sites in Australia—two in Nuriootpa, one in Berri, and one in Griffith. Tarac offers services and solutions to the wine industry, such as processing winery waste and waste water treatment to assist the industry to become more environmentally sustainable by reducing the ethanol emissions and landfill. They also offer distillation services, including alcohol reduction, wine concentrations, etc.

In 2009, Tarac processed approximately 130,000 tonnes of grape marc, more than 55 million litres of liquid waste and 7,000 tonnes of solid waste. Tarac Technologies also undertake many projects and initiatives to ensure their own operations are as environmentally sustainable as possible. Projects include:

The re-use of biogas to save the use of natural gas: a relatively new system which Tarac anticipates will reduce natural gas use by 18 per cent and reduce CO2 emissions by 4,000 tonnes per annum;

Upgrade of the distillery to reduce energy and water consumption;

Company-wide water audits: Tarac has an in-house water efficiency team developed and tasked with developing plans to implement water saving measures;

Sustainability rating: a five-star rating system which uses qualitative and quantitative data to provide specific ratings on current sustainability performance and recommendations for improvement.

Tarac also has plans in the future to conduct a feasibility study into the future, with the aim to recover energy from biomass to offset natural gas and electricity consumption, and return energy to the grid.

Beckwith Park is an innovative new industrial business park in Nuriootpa. Beckwith Park management is currently in the process of achieving green certification as the master plan is executed and new tenants take up residency. Beckwith Park offers storage, logistical services, showrooms, offices, light manufacturing, bulk wine storage and bulk liquid storage.

Once again, I would like to thank the Tarac management very much for taking the time to show the minister and me around the two sites and explain the process and services they offer. I wish them all the best for the future. I also hope that other members would like to visit the facilities. I am happy to arrange that, because I was very impressed, and I know that the minister was too. Many people would not understand or realise what goes on here, because the grape industry, in the past, was labelled an environmental concern in relation to odours and the by-product. However, here we have an industry which picks up almost all the waste and turns it into a valuable product.

To finish off, I was extremely impressed to learn that Tarac went out and bought grapes that nobody else could buy, took them in at cost, and then squashed them and made spirit out of them. The farmers received the cost of the picking—so they got some money for their unmarketable grapes—and all in all, it was a great success. I congratulate Tarac and look forward to cooperating with them in anything they wish to do.

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