Securing food and energy for future generations

This project addresses the need for manure utilisation and the demand for electricity in the Palestinian Territories. Local partner Agropal Investments Company Ltd (dairy farm) became interested, after learning about another PSI project on manure utilisation by transformation to biogas for producing electricity and organic fertiliser.

The applicant, Oosterhof Holman Milieutechniek B.V. already has many years of experience with building biogas installations and reacted to the interest of Agropal by investigating the feasibility of building such an installation on the farm of Agropal. The result is a well elaborated plan that is proposed for PSI support.

The installation will be built on the dairy farm of Agropal near Hebron and will supply the electricity to other farms in the region by building a small grid. The biogas reactor designed to produce gas for a CHP installation of 340 kWh will also utilise waste from other farms/food processors.

The applicant is part of the Oosterhof Holman Group that works mainly in infrastructure contracting. The local partner Agropal owns a large dairy farm with 600 cows and is seeking ways to get more added value to the farm. Wageningen University has pledged support for providing knowledge on utilising the fertiliser products of the installation.

The partners will establish a joint venture company for implementing the project and run the business coming from the project. Oosterhof Holman sees the joint venture as an opportunity to get involved in a wider range of "environment" business in the Middle East.
This project is the first in the Palestinian Territories that will introduce manure/waste biogas technology. It will produce electricity from renewable sources and produce valuable fertilisers for crop and vegetable production.