Wizard of waste solves issues

LiquidStrip founding designer Greg Morgan (left), his brother Scott (right) and Paul Fitzgibbon, both of whom handle sales.

I'm opening this year's series of innovations from National Fieldays by revisiting one of last year's high performers.

Exhibiting in the Grassroots Innovations category in 2014 was Greg Morgan, founder of LiquidStrip, who won the Gallagher Brilliant Simplicity award.

This year, he was back in the Launch Innovations category with sales support from his brother Scott -- who has been with the project since the prototype and parts were scattered around Morgan's garage floor -- and sales manager Paul Fitzgibbon.

Launch Innovations is the stepping stone from concept to market -- and on display was the Dairy Shed Effluent product that Auckland-based LiquidStrip has manufactured by Hamilton's Stainless Design.

Morgan is proud of the whole Kiwi-designed and built product and the successes it has enjoyed.

Last year it was a finalist in three categories of the highly competitive New Zealand Innovators Awards (Design and Engineering, Sustainability and Clean-tech, Agriculture and Environment) and, this year, a finalist in the IBM Most Innovative Initiative category of the NZ Hi-Tech Awards.

LiquidStrip is a continuous filtration system designed to separate liquids and solids from waste, such as shed effluent, efficiently.

Morgan's invention removes solids from wastewater and converts them into pellet or slug form by passing unwanted liquids through a filter that uses patented technology to transform waste into useful solids.

He has been in the wine industry for more than two decades and initially came up with the idea when he saw how much water was wasted in the winemaking process.

His aim was that the benefits will reach far beyond just winemaking and dairy farming and eventually be used to create fertiliser.

That aim is moving forward.

With the dairying model at Fieldays, interest in other applications was high and the team took a number of enquiries, including from overseas.

Morgan says these range from dredging seabeds and harbours for liquids, solids separation, mining, treating waste water and products from meatworks through to potato processing systems.

But the main benefit for New Zealand agriculture is solving dairy shed waste issues for farmers.

Morgan says farmers can have confidence LiquidStrip is environmentally compliant and saves on capital and operational costs.

He credits the Fieldays Innovation Centre and start-up supporter, Hamilton-based SODA, as being key to how far individual entrepreneurs can take their products or services in such a competitive industry.

 LiquidStrip: (09) 810 7029, greg@liquidstrip.co.nz