Winery laps up mussels
There’s something fishy about the Yealands Estate winery in Marlborough.
It might be something to do with the thousands of tonnes of mussels, which were crushed, mixed and spread beneath the vines this year.
The mussel-mulching is the result of a unique sustainability initiative the vineyard has devised up with aquaculture firm Sanford.
Sanford operates a big greenshell mussel farm in the Marlborough Sounds, with processing plants in Havelock and Christchurch.
When the mussel lines are stripped for harvest, the smaller blue mussels and seaweed are often caught up with the greenshells.
Until recently, Sanford had been dumping tonnes of the unsellable waste material at the local landfill, creating the mother of all shell middens.
But this year the Havelock factory increased its waste eco- efficiency by 51 per cent, primarily by recycling the blue mussels.
Now 90 to 95 per cent of the waste material produced by the factory is either recycled or used elsewhere.
Vineyard mogul Peter Yealands, who pioneered mussel farming in the 1970s, can’t get enough of the waste to feed to his grapes.
‘‘The mussel mulch is really, really good. It adds a lot of nutrients,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s what I call ‘the gravy’.’’ The shells reflect light and help retain heat and moisture, while the meat, lining and hinge break down and give the earthworms something to nibble on.
‘‘The difference for us from a vineyard point of view is enormous,’’ Mr Yealands says.
The initiative is saving Sanford a small fortune.
Commercial dumping rates at the council-owned refuse centre range from $60 a tonne for mussel shell to $95 for general refuse.
A similar scheme is under way at Sanford’s Christchurch factory. Marine waste is sent to a composting company which sells it to local farmers, and crushed shell waste goes to a landscaping firm.
The Christchurch plant reduced its waste to landfill by 1542 cubic metres last year, equivalent to 8160 wheelie bins.