Pavilion Farms Anakie Anaerobic Digestion Project

Pavilion Farms Anakie Anaerobic Digestion Project is an alternative waste treatment project located at Anakie, 30km northwest of Geelong in Victoria. It was registered in June 2022 and operates out of a facility on Carrs Road. The project is situated within an agricultural region heavily utilised for sheep and beef cattle grazing, cereal cropping, and intensive poultry farming on the Werribee and Corio basalt plains.

Alternative waste treatment projects under the Carbon Farming Initiative involve diverting mixed solid waste or organic matter away from traditional landfill disposal. Standard requirements typically dictate that the waste must be processed in an enclosed facility, such as an anaerobic digester, where the resulting biogas (methane) is captured and combusted to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and generate renewable energy.

The Anakie area typically experiences moderate to low annual rainfall, generally ranging from 540mm on the open plains to 640mm in the nearby volcanic hills. Because the regional environment sits on the Western Volcanic Plain, typical soil profiles include shallow basaltic cracking clays, alkaline mottled black texture contrast soils, and friable red duplex soils around the prominent volcanic cones.

This project, spearheaded by Pavilion Biogas (a subsidiary of large-scale broiler chicken operator Pavilion Farms), was set up to construct an anaerobic digestion plant directly alongside its existing broiler farms. The plant aims to process roughly 30,000 tonnes of organic waste per year, primarily chicken litter (poultry manure and straw) from the company's sheds, combined with other organic food waste. This circular farming initiative is designed to generate up to 21,000 MWh of renewable electricity annually to power the farm and export to the grid, while also producing over 6,000 tonnes of pathogen-free organic fertiliser. To support its development, the project notably received a $9.3 million grant from the Victorian Government under the Energy Innovation Fund.