Lead consultant for ProTen Broiler Poultry Farms

Challenge

ProTen is the leading broiler poultry farm developer and operator in Australia. ProTen owns and operates a total of 561 poultry sheds across 47 broiler farms strategically located in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland.

ProTen required a lead Consultant to provide essential expertise in the realms of environmental management and regulatory approvals, as integral elements of both ProTen’s progressive planning program and the continuous operations of its farms.

SLR offers an extensive array of specialised services tailored to support every stage of agricultural establishment through ongoing farm operations. Each individual farm possesses distinctive characteristics, necessitating a diverse range of environmental assessments and strategic management plans. These measures are imperative to ensure that ProTen realises its corporate mission effectively by safeguarding the wellbeing of its poultry livestock and mitigating environmental ramifications, thus enhancing the long-term viability of its enterprise.

SLR has adopted a streamlined and integrated multidisciplinary approach, delivering a comprehensive suite of services to ProTen. These services include:

• Planning due diligence and feasibility assessment
• Planning application preparation
• Environmental impact statement preparation
• Project management
• Annual reviews
• Independent environmental auditing
• Environmental management plan preparation
• Traffic impact assessment
• Acoustic impact assessment
• Visual impact assessment
• Air quality assessment
• Civil engineering (stormwater)
• Contamination assessment
• Soils and geotechnical assessment
• Ecological assessment
• Bushfire assessment
• Social assessment
• Glint and glare assessment
• Hazard assessment
• GIS mapping/solutions, and
• Plan drafting services.

Solution

Most recently our team has been supporting ProTen with the Rushes Creek Poultry Production Farm, located approximately 60km north west of Tamworth, New South Wales. The Rushes Creek Farm has state significant development (SSD) consent to construct 54 poultry sheds across 4 poultry production units (PPUs). The Development is to be established over two separate stages, with Stage 1 comprising the construction and operation of PPU 2 and associated ancillaries, and Stage 2 comprising the construction and operation of PPU 1, PPU 3, and PPU 4 and associated ancillaries. A key component of developments of this scale are the ongoing implementation of design alterations and incremental adjustments. These adaptations give rise to the necessity for applications seeking modifications.

Our team has been supporting ProTen with the required modification applications consisting of the following elements: planning & land use, air quality, noise, visual, traffic, heritage, aboriginal heritage, soil, contaminated land, biodiversity, socioeconomic, waste management, utilities, hazards & risks, ecologically sustainable development, greenhouse gas assessment and diesel use in New South Wales agriculture.

Impact

Our team consistently delivers environmental solutions to various ProTen farms, contributing to their sustained operations. In our most recent endeavors, our team has achieved considerable success in securing multiple approvals for modifications to enhance the functionality of the Rushes Creek Poultry Production Farm, aligning its operations more effectively with ProTen's requirements. We are actively engaged in the formulation and evaluation of continuous management plans, ensuring that they remain up-to-date, effective, and environmentally sound. Our advisory services, consistently provided to ProTen, serve to facilitate the attainment of their environmental objectives.

In addition to assisting in problem solving and providing solutions for a large development of sheds that ProTen is undertaking the other many multiple listed disciplines above have been undertaking business as usual activities for multiple farms across Australia including site audits and monitoring, transactional due diligence reviews of facilities and reviews of existing licensing and operation to ensure ProTen is a set ahead of compliance and changing regulatory trends.