JBS Beef City Wastewater Biogas Emissions Reduction

JBS Beef City Wastewater Biogas Emissions Reduction is an industrial wastewater project located at the JBS Beef City facility in Purrawunda, approximately 30km west of Toowoomba in Queensland's Darling Downs region. It was registered in January 2022 and covers an unspecified area within the facility's footprint.

Domestic, Commercial and Industrial Wastewater projects involve capturing biogas generated during the treatment of wastewater. By replacing deep open anaerobic lagoons with covered anaerobic digesters, the naturally occurring methane is captured rather than vented into the atmosphere. For this specific project, the captured biogas is subsequently combusted using a boiler to generate process heat for the meat processing plant.

The surrounding Darling Downs area is well known for its intensive agriculture, including broadacre grain cropping and livestock feedlots. The region generally experiences moderate, subtropical rainfall and is characterized by highly fertile, deep cracking clay soils (vertosols).

JBS Beef City is an integrated feedlot and abattoir that recently celebrated 50 years of operation, having been originally constructed in 1974. This bioenergy upgrade, delivered in partnership with Energy360 and AGL, produces up to 10,000 cubic metres of renewable biogas per day (or roughly 64 terajoules annually). This system effectively reduces the site's reliance on natural gas and eliminates the equivalent of approximately 34,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year. The project's agent is Northmore Gordon Environmental, and the project methodology determination was recently updated in March 2025.