Just like the cartoon, hero and sailor man Popeye saved his beloved Olive Oyl with a healthy dose of spinach, so too is South African Breweries (SAB) providing economic salvation to a local start-up business near its Ibhayi Brewery in the Eastern Cape through this same green superfood.
SAB? Spinach? Economic salvation? You may be wondering how these seemingly incomparable items unite?
In what has become aptly known as project Imifino, SAB, through its Ibhayi Brewery and the Project Eden Water Conservation Park, will be developing a commercial 2 000m2 drip irrigation system. This will help a local business sustainably grow spinach in raised beds.
The unique value of Imifino is that the water and nutrient requirements of the crops are fully provided for by the wastewater generated in the brewing process, with no requirement for additional water or fertilisers.
Circularity in action
The losses from production normally become a waste management liability for a business and, all too frequently, society or the receiving environment.
In SAB’s unique approach these nutrients can be transformed into a new agricultural product. This turns a potential loss into a sustainable business with a literally green product – true circularity in action.
The director of agricultural development at SAB, Josh Hammann, says, “Through project Eden we were able to double our impact to reduce our internal water consumption, and can now provide a source of food and income to our local community.”
SAB has taken the economic impact of Imifino a step further as it has pledged to offer a capital investment to kick-start the agricultural ventures linked to Imifino with local business TaylorMade Water Solutions (TMWS).
“We will be supporting the operation of TMWS for the first 12 months through the construction and commercial establishment phase and have offered additional technical and business coaching with the assistance of our Supplier Development Team, after which it will become self-sufficient,” says Hammann.
To comprehend the depth of impact of Eden, and in its wake Imifino, one needs to travel back to 1998, when Martin Davies of Rhodes University was involved in conceptualising the innovation when it was first presented to SAB.
The idea was well received 23 years ago, but it was “born” a little ahead of its time, since it was 10 years later in 2008 that SAB made an initial investment of R1 million towards Eden.
Over the following 13 years, Professor Cliff Jones from the department of ichthyology and fisheries science at Rhodes has led this research and development as a joint project with SAB.
In collaboration with crop scientists from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and with financial support from the Water Research Commission (WRC), they developed and tested these innovations on experimental and pilot scales.
Imifino is the next big step; it will provide proof-of-concept of the work on a full commercial scale for the first time.
The team recovered water from brewery effluent using high-rate algal ponding and constructed wetland technology to recover the water and to harness the nutrient potential that was locked in the effluent. This was done through various applications including aquaculture, hydroponics, algal biomass production and agriculture.
Creating much-needed jobs
“This is the triple helix at its best. SAB is leading the way for the sustainable use of our limited water resources while creating significant and tangible social benefits through the incorporation of the circular economy and water energy and food nexus principles,” says Dhesigen Naidoo, CEO of the WRC.
It did not take long before the concept of using effluent treatment to produce food and to create jobs evolved into secondary applications of water prior to its release, through environmentally sustainable approaches.
Imifino grew out of Eden and creates an intermediate water user (the spinach beds) which reduces the nutrient concentration of the water, improving its quality to the extent that more water, of a higher quality, is available to be recovered for reuse in the brewery.
The spinach beds really only “use” roughly 10% of the water flowing through it, with 90% still available for reuse. The crops primarily utilise the nutrients in the water and thus Imifino serves as a treatment where the water is supplied to the spinach beds which then remove the nutrients while growing, thereby cleaning the water.
This “polishing” of the water allows the brewery to recover more water through its water recycling plant, which further helps to improve the site’s water efficiency. The beauty of the system is creating a brand-new output (spinach) with no additional water requirement in the catchment and improving the brewery’s water use through improved water quality and reuse potential.
“What began as a project to treat our water has become so much more,” exclaims Hammann.
“This is not only the first fully green biological treatment system for a brewery in Africa, it is a platform for the continuation of research and development at Rhodes University, and a source of job creation worth R2 million of downstream value per year.”
ALSO READ: FarmSol celebrates increase in profitable farmers
Sign up for Mzansi Today: Your daily take on the news and happenings from the agriculture value chain.
