Agriculture Collaboration (AgriZeroNZ)
SBC membership offers the chance to be a part of industry-wide collaborations with other businesses facing similar sustainability challenges. By pooling time, resources, ideas and energy together to tackle these challenges, our members are able to influence change faster and on a larger scale than they would be able to achieve alone. Click here to learn more about our other collaborations.
AgriZeroNZ: joint venture born of an SBC collaboration
New Zealand’s agricultural emissions account for the greatest proportion of the country’s total national greenhouse gas emissions. In 2021, SBC saw the opportunity to bring together its leading primary sector business in order to work collaboratively to develop a plan to tackle this challenge.
The SBC-established Agriculture Working Group, comprising of agribusiness members including Fonterra, Silver Fern Farms, Synlait, Ravensdown and ANZCO Foods, worked alongside the Ministry for Primary Industries to develop a public-private joint venture worth $172 million, which aimed to see a step-change in public and private investment in applied R&D in agriculture to unlock solutions to the challenge of biogenic methane. The public funding was secured as part of the Government’s establishment of the Centre for Climate Action on Agricultural Emissions in 2022.
Formally launched at Field Days 2023, the newly named AgriZeroNZ is a world first partnership between agribusiness and the government, a catalyst and investment fund, with an ambition to accelerate the reduction of agricultural emissions by 30% by 2030.
“The SBC was instrumental in the creation of AgriZeroNZ – from the initial concept, through to facilitating critical collaboration and bringing together the private sector shareholders, and finally taking the proposal to government. As a result, we now have a JV that is not only working to solve the emissions challenge for our pasture-based farmers, but also has potential to be the world leader in commercialising emissions reduction solutions for pasture-based farmers that can be sold in New Zealand and globally.”
– Wayne McNee, AgriZeroNZ Executive Director
To learn more about the joint venture and its roots as an SBC collaboration, watch a video (below left) of AgriZeroNZ Executive Director Wayne McNee from our 2023 Annual Council Meeting, or listen to his RNZ interview alongside the CEOs of Synlait and Silver Fern Farms (below right).
