Ravensdown’s huge $30m fertiliser plant opens
Ravensdown’s new Smart Rd distribution centre in New Plymouth blends fertiliser and efficiency, writes Mike Shaw.
A $30 million environmentally state-of-the-art fertiliser plant in New Plymouth is one of the largest ever capital projects of its kind in the country.
The new Ravensdown precision blending plant was officially opened at a function attended by 400 guests on Monday with production scheduled to start in a fortnight, on March 5.
It is the second precision blending plant in Australasia after Ravensdown opened a similar operation in Christchurch in 2016.
The New Plymouth store and blending plant was not only a commitment to Taranaki and surrounding regions but would change the way some farmers receive and use fertiliser, with economic and environmental benefits throughout the supply chain, Ravensdown chief executive Greg Campbell said.
The company’s former Smart Rd site, described as an ‘‘eyesore’ by commercial neighbours, was sold in 2016 to a developer and plans have been floated for a major retail centre there.
The site had been a fertiliser plant since 1928. Ravensdown bought the site from New Zealand Farmers Fertiliser Company in
1998.
The company’s new Waiwhakaiho 7.5ha site had been a massive undertaking and a great example of teamwork with the council and contracting partners over three years, Campbell said. The floor area covered 1.5ha and the roof height reached 21m, while bulk storage capacity totalled
52,000 tonnes.
In terms of scale, the amount of roofing and cladding used in the construction would stretch 27km the same distance between New Plymouth and Okato. The equivalent of five Olympic-sized swimming pools, or 12,500 cubic metres of soil, was removed to build the site. The amount of structural concrete laid totalled
7700cum - the equivalent of three Olympic sized pools.
‘‘As a co-operative, we invest in plants like this to improve service to our owner - shareholders so they can continue to grow premium quality food,’’ Campbell said.
The precision blending plant would see precise blends and coatings of fertiliser made to order and of better quality.
The new plant would mean continued business for Port Taranaki, and western and central North Island distributors. Ravensdown imported more than 100,000 tonnes of mineral fertilisers through Port Taranaki annually and supplied
150,000 tonnes to about 4300 farms. Ravensdown annual report to year ended May 31 2017 showed the company made $51m profit before rebate and tax.
The bulk of New Plymouth’s just-opened Ravensdown fertiliser facility is impressive from a distance, although it’s not visible from its entrance on Smart Rd. Vehicles travelling along Katere Rd can see it easily, albeit set back as it is from the buffer of reserve greenery on the southern side of the road.
There’s more than bulk here, though, in either the structure or its contents. A tour through the building reveals the technology and sophisticated operation that make this a state-of-the-art distribution centre for Ravensdown.
A visit prior to the opening begins with a welcome from site manager Graham Currie and his induction process to allow entry to what is still a construction site. He’s quite familiar with these processes and the protocols they require.
That familiarity includes New Plymouth, as his early construction experience embraced the rise of the city’s power station chimney back in the early 1970s. Ministry of Works positions in New Plymouth and Palmerston North were followed by increasingly senior contract management roles on other worksites around New Zealand and overseas. He knows his stuff.
As does Ravensdown programme manager Graham Eskdale, who is based in Pukekohe but has been a regular visitor to the Ravensdown site to oversee progress.
Two Grahams with complementary responsibilities for the construction work prompted nicknames for the pair – on site, Graham Eskdale is known as G1 and Graham Currie is G2.
Graham Eskdale brought plenty of experience with Ravensdown to his role. In his almost 20 years with the company he has held several roles including field representative, stores manager, logistics manager and in more recent years project manager for national distribution projects. For the last three or four years, much of that time has been spent on the planning and construction of the New Plymouth project.
He was pleased to have the opportunity to guide this project. ‘‘A ‘green-field’ job of this scale doesn’t come up every day,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s the largest individual project Ravensdown has ever done in one crack. Thirty million dollars is a big investment.’’
He was involved early in the decision process that considered Ravensdown’s future here. ‘‘Taranaki is an established market, but we are always out to grow it,’’ he says.
Product from New Plymouth is moved and spread throughout the region, and there is a significant amount of urea imported through Port Taranaki that is carried on to other Ravensdown facilities around most of the North Island. Updating the old facilities to modernise and enhance operations had become an increasingly important issue.
The project team quickly identified the attraction and value of a ‘green-field’ construction project on land near the existing site rather than rebuilding the old facilities.
‘‘There were many issues with the old store,’’ Eskdale explains. ‘‘The green field project on available land was the way to go.’’
A business case was approved for the funding and detailed plans drawn up for the construction work. Railway land was purchased to gain access from Smart Rd to the otherwise ‘landlocked’ new site, and a new road was built in.
The first dirt was turned in February
2016, which should have been an auspicious start date, taking advantage of the summer civil construction season. Unseasonal wet weather that summer made it a difficult start, but the work progressed steadily.
Building consent was received in August
2016, Eskdale says, and work on the structure took 14 months from the time the first nail was driven.
It’s been a smooth project, with a daily workforce of more than 60 people employed on site during the peak of the construction work. ‘‘We tried to go local where we could and everyone has worked as a team. Clelands Construction was the main contractor and the team have been tremendous to work with.’’
The New Plymouth project embraced a number of important elements.
The environmental aspects were critical with the need to have all the mixing, handling and bagging operations enclosed within the building structure to minimise dust issues. ‘‘Health and safety is a strong company value … that was topmost in our minds. I know what staff have had to put up with down there (in the old buildings), so it’s good to be able to provide a facility that is more user friendly.’’
In addition, all stormwater onsite is collected using a site water capture and bioremediation system to strip nutrients from the water before returning it to the local stream near the site boundary.
Speed of operation and efficiency will increase significantly with new equipment in place. Trucks and mobile plant can move around the facility more quickly, and the space provided will allow bigger loads and fewer of them.
Blend quality is equally important for customers, as is the need to get the right fertiliser in the right place at the right time.
All those elements are revealed during the Graham Currie-led tour of the site.
The main building is cavernous – 15,000sqm of floor space with the apex of the open-span roof 22m up. The overall height of the building is another 10m above that where the top of the blender tower rises.
We walk through the huge space to the
far end of the building where the trucks bring in bulk fertiliser from the ships unloading at Port Taranaki. Currie points out the intake corridor across the end of the building with sensor-operated entry and exit doors opening for each truck and closing behind it.
Each load is tipped into a grate-covered
7m-deep hole in the concrete floor – 15 tonnes at a time from a truck and 20 tonnes from a trailer unit. A conveyor unit there carries the fertiliser to a bucket elevator that raises the fertiliser 20m up to the main distribution conveyor. That then carries the fertiliser to the huge storage bays – five main bays well in excess of
10,000 cubic metres each (two for urea and one each for potash, superphosphate and DAP) and several smaller utility bays for lesser-demand special mixes.
‘‘It’s like Mum’s pantry, with all its bulk ingredients,’’ Currie adds, with a smile.
The combination of the delivery pit and covered conveyor and elevator equipment keeps dust to a minimum, he notes.
Fertiliser dust can be corrosive and the building has been built with that in mind. Currie points out the corrugated wall of the building – not metal as you might assume, but a fiberglass cladding and structural steel work that has several layers of a special paint coating. Fasteners are all stainless-steel.
The green grilles on steps and underfoot on walkways throughout the building are also fiberglass, he says. And the yellow tubular railings and kick strips protecting the edges of the elevated walkways are FRP – fibre-reinforced plastic.
Walking back along the length of the building, Currie indicates the precision blending tower rising up to and through the roof. It’s a high-intensity mixer from US company Sackett & Sons - only the second one in New Zealand or Australia (the first is in Ravensdown’s Christchurch facility).
‘‘There are 12 huge bulk bins at the top and we batch-blend out of them,’’ says Currie.
Loaders carry the appropriate fertiliser from the main bays to a hopper at the base of the blending tower and the fertiliser is carried up another bucket elevator to the bins at the top. Any blend of fertilisers can be selected from the bulk bins to drop into highly accurate weigh bins below and then into the high intensity mixer to obtain a precision fertiliser blend. Liquid additives can also be introduced to the mixer operation to add granule coatings.
The final product can then be carried by conveyor and bucket lift to a rotary screen which adds another level of quality control to make sure the right size of granulated fertiliser is sent out.
From that, a shuttle conveyor moves smoothly back and forth to fill a truck or trailer parked below. The truck driver can come up into the control room to operate the joystick conveyor controls to make sure the fertiliser is loaded into his vehicle in the best way possible.
The height of the blending tower usually means it is installed on site first and the building rises around it, Currie says. In the case of this New Plymouth facility, the building went up first and the tower was assembled inside it.
That change was made to capitalise on the experience of another plant being built at in Christchurch that was still being commissioned in the early stages of this New Plymouth project. ‘‘Lessons learnt there were brought to this project, so we delayed the tower erection here,’’ Currie explains. ‘‘That required a lot of cooperation from the various contractors.’’
The completed New Plymouth facility has a design life of 30 years, says Graham Eskdale. But future upgrades and equipment development could well extend the operational life here well beyond that. Another century, maybe?