There's money in that Gisborne mud

The East Coast has had a tad too much mud lately, but Gisborne company Parehaka Minerals is about to make money from people putting its mud on their faces.

But it is not just ordinary mud - it's magic mud with 1000 uses, more correctly known as bentonite, and inland from Te Karaka, northeast of the city, is 145ha holding more than 60 million tonnes.

Naturally occurring on land owned by the Bloomfield family since the 1800s, director Gerry Bloomfield says the uses for Parehaka Minerals' sodium bentonite are huge.

Originally used as an oil rig drilling lubricant, it has only been in recent times that a diverse range of applications has been discovered for the type of bentonite found on the property.

Marketing bentonite as an acne treatment and possibly as a fertiliser additive have been two more recent developments. Trials with some pimple-plagued Australian teenagers had resulted in 100 per cent clearance of the acne.

Parehaka Bentonite also has the possibility of being developed for medicinal uses - such as for burns - and has also been found good dealing with insect bites and bee stings.

The bentonite has already proved itself as a soil conditioner.

Tests in the Bay of Plenty have shown a 10-18 per cent increase in milk solids production on dairy farms, increased grass conversion and a lot less scouring and disease. On lucerne crops in lighter soils, there is a big increase in yield.

The company's cat litter, marketed as Cat Magic and Pet Magic, will be used in the Signature range in the next two months. Parehaka also supplies the Coles brand in Australia.

Originally, Bloomfield and his brother and business partner Bill began their venture with the bentonite on the property by supplying up to 2000 tonnes of the mud a year as a concrete additive. In 1995, they started a joint venture with an Auckland group to process the bentonite and market it as a coagulant for cleaning up wastewater streams for abattoirs, rendering plants and sewage treatment plants.

"It is ideal for a waste system because it's non-toxic, with no chemical additives," said Gerry Bloomfield.

In 2000, the Bloomfield brothers bought out their Auckland joint venture partners and started diversifying their products. And after five years of hard work, the company is looking at a bright future.

What is bentonite?

* Bentonite was formed from volcanic ash deposits under the sea in the Jurassic era.

* While there are many deposits world-wide, the Parehaka sodium bentonite has special qualities not found in others.

* It has been described as the finest naturally occurring substance in the world.

- NZPA