In 2016 Holla Fresh sought out to replace purchased electricity and a high maintenance boiler that used waste oil to heat water for their glasshouse with a cleaner and lower cost alternative.

Green Industries SA assisted Holla Fresh to review various options including solar, wind, wood chip boiler, diesel and LPG boilers and ECHO2 which at that stage was an R&D prototype at Kalannie in Western Australia. After 9 months of due diligence, feasibility studies and reviews, ECHO2 was chosen.

ECHO2 Biomass to Energy & Biochar technology developed in Australia by Rainbow Bee Eater.

Holla-Fresh’s instalment is the first commercial demonstration.

The ECHO2 module supplies Holla Fresh with:

  • hot water for the Glasshouse
  • electricity (not yet completed)
  • horticultural CO2 (not yet completed)
  • biochar is exchanged for the biomass fuel with Van Schaik’s BioGro to intensify the benefits of their composted soil
  • Condensate
  • cascading economic, social and environmental benefits (listed below

Holla Fresh’s Operations are Carbon Negative. Every year Holla Fresh produce their energy from a renewable resource and remove another 2 years worth of their previous CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. Avoiding ~2000 t/y CO2e burning waste oil and electricity purchases from the grid PLUS locking up ~4000y/y CO2e in high carbon biochar for thousands of years. Allows ~200t/y CO2 BioGro logistics and processing

How the technology works:

 Biochar is essentially charcoal made from waste organic material, such as crop or forest plantation residues. This material is heated in the relative absence of oxygen, which means the organic material does not catch