Pukekohe cucumber grower says natural gas transition threatens production

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Few examples of businesses finding themselves between a rock and a hard place in the search for alternative energy are starker than Pukekohe’s Passion Fresh Cucumbers, producer of…

Passion Fresh Cucumbers managing director, Josie Lambert. Photo / Spid Pye

Few examples of businesses finding themselves between a rock and a hard place in the search for alternative energy are starker than Pukekohe’s Passion Fresh Cucumbers, producer of around 25% of the country’s cucumbers.

Not only must the business, which employs up to 70 people across two sites, find commercially viable alternatives to natural gas in a narrowing timeframe, its productivity depends on the carbon dioxide (CO2) that natural gas burns off.

And, says managing director Josie Lambert, there are no viable CO2 alternatives available.

“If we lose all access to natural gas and have no availability of alternative CO2 sources, our production will go down, which will mean our prices go up based on basic supply and demand,” says Lambert.

“We are not just using it as an energy source for an electricity equivalent. It actually is part of our process to drive productivity. There’s no available CO2 production in New Zealand, so there’s no alternative.”

For producers of covered crops like Passion Fresh, the dilemma isn’t just about the rising cost of a diminishing resource and the capital cost required to transition to another energy source.

Neither electricity nor biomass provides an essential tool for their fresh produce businesses – photosynthesis.

After turning to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), and then an energy specialist consultancy to plot “a road map” to transition to another energy source, Passion Fresh can only hope for technology to address the CO2 dilemma, she says.

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