Page 30 - Food&Drink Business Magazine June 2019

PLANT DESIGN & FITOUT
Manufacturing change
An innovative project to turn food waste into chicken feed is being brought to life by a transportable processing unit designed by RMR Process. By Kim Berry.
AUSTRALIANS eat more than 10 million chickens a week and 13 million eggs a day.
Meanwhile, commercial and industrial food waste costs the Australian economy about $10 billion every year. In total food waste terms, 97 per cent goes to landfill. Halting food waste in NSW alone would have the environmental effect of taking 117,000 cars off the road.
Boyle spoke with Food & Drink Business about this ambitious project to turn food waste into chicken feed. He is confident it could be rolled out by the end of the year.
Boyle outlined how the poultry industry is expected to double by 2050, and “that is not that far away”. While chicken farms can increase their production, the question of how you feed them is more pressing, Boyle says.
“ It’s like your nan making a cake – you take a bit from this stream, this stream and this stream to make your specific chicken feed.”
The connection between our consumption of chicken and how we deal with food
waste is not immediately apparent, but
consultant and entrepreneur
Norm Boyle, with Peter Taitoko, CEO of
food process and facility design firm
RMR Process, are set to change that with the
Food Recycle project.
The added challenge is that the poultry farming industry is one of the most tightly regulated in the world.
“They are paranoid about bio hazards as well as closely guarding their intellectual property around what they feed their birds,” he says.
“To get traction from a commercialisation point of view is extremely difficult. It was a necessity of this project to involve the research capabilities of universities.
The Food Recycle cycle creates no waste.
30 | Food&Drink business | June 2019 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au