Three new GasNZ members keen on biogas

1 September 2025

GasNZ welcomes three new members keen on biogas 

Following the recent Biogas Bridge forum, three new members have joined GasNZ and are enthused about the potential of biogas. 

They include two local council operations – the Manawatu District Council and the landfill unit of the Nelson City/Tasman District councils – together with Waikato based meat processor, Greenlea Premier Meats. 

Manawatu District Council 

Hamish Waugh, general manager of infrastructure at the Manawatu District Council, says he has a long interest in biogas recovery, and has been working with Powerco over the last 18 months or so to look at the feasibility of processing the biogas recovered from its wastewater treatment facility in Fielding into biomethane and by-products. 

They have also worked with Pioneer Energy and Ecogas in developing their organic waste recovery options. 

The council starts kerbside waste food collection later this year, and will initially feed this into Ecogas’s facilty at Reporoa, but has plans to develop its own regional anaerobic digestion infrastructure and business at its Fielding resource recovery park, collecting the organic waste of local authorities and processing industries in the lower North Island. 

Membership of GasNZ ensures the council “is plugged into the wider gas industry”; particularly others working in the renewable gas sector, Waugh says.  

Nelson/Tasman 

Nathan Clarke, general manager of the Nelson Tasman Regional Landfill Business Unit, owned jointly by Nelson City Council and the Tasman District Council, is a pioneer of anaerobic digestion both in New Zealand and internationally. 

For many years he says the landfill business unit had been using biogas to produce steam which it was selling to the Nelson Hospital – previously in partnership with Pioneer Energy.  

The biogas was piped over two kilometres underground to a boiler facility at the hospital, which was originally owned by Pioneer Energy and then directly by the landfill business unit. 

Now Clarke says the landfill unit wants the hospital to be responsible for its own boilers and his business will sell the gas rather than the steam produced. 

“We’re not boiler experts – we don’t want to have the boilers.  

“Landfill gas is our core business.” 

He says that now, as a gas distributor, they need to be aware of and compliant will all appropriate regulations covering the sector, and membership of GasNZ is part of integrating itself and having access to the sector’s knowledge base. 

Greenlea Premier Meats 

Waikato-based Greenlea Premier Meats is New Zealand’s fourth largest meat processor and exporter, and is GasNZ’s first member in the ‘gas user’ category. 

As a natural gas consumer, Greenlea uses much of its gas rendering waste meat product at its Waitoa site near Morrinsville. And in line with the company’s interest in sustainability values, it now also wants to explore taking that rendered meat product and extract biogas from it through anaerobic digestion. 

Julie McDade, Greenlea’s business development and sustainability manager, says they are currently developing a business case for the establishment of a regional biogas production hub in the Waikato region. 

“Rendering is a really huge user of gas,” McDade says. Greenlea has just built a brand new, state-of-the-art rendering plant in Waitoa. 

Neighbouring the plant are several other food and organic processing businesses which could also supply feedstock for anaerobic digestion facilities, with the potential of then refining the biogas produced into biomethane – part of which, in turn, could be used in Greenlea’s rendering process itself. 

It would make good economic sense to collaborate with other local organic waste producers to build a facility rather than them all going alone, McDade says. 

Greenlea is in early-stage discussion with fellow GasNZ member, energy infrastructure engineering consultancy Verbrec, which it met at the Biogas Bridge forum, with respect to developing a feasibility study for the regional biogas anaerobic digestion hub. 

If positive, this would then be developed into a business case, which would seek to bring other partners on board.