{"id":809226,"date":"2026-07-19T00:56:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T00:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/809226\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T00:56:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T00:56:27","slug":"cattle-farmers-plant-trees-for-sustainable-aviation-fuel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/809226\/","title":{"rendered":"Cattle farmers plant trees for sustainable aviation fuel"},"content":{"rendered":"

A north Queensland cattle farming family is taking part in a trial growing oil-producing trees alongside livestock.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Lawrie family, from Powlathanga station near Charters Towers in north Queensland, has been running a cattle breeding operation since 2004.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But now the family is taking part in a new venture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In September last year, they turned a 10-hectare paddock into a renewable fuel trial, planting the oil-producing pongamia trees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Newly<\/p>\n

The pongamia trees were planted eight months ago. (ABC Landline: Cameron Lang)<\/p>\n

The trial is being completed with SilvoPlus, an entity of renewable fuel company JetZero Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They’re trying to determine the best way to run livestock alongside rows of pongamia, a legume tree with seeds containing oil that can be processed into biofuel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The Lawrie family breed cattle on Powlathanga station. (ABC Landline: Cameron Lang)<\/p>\n

Powlathanga grazier, Stephen Lawrie, said they wanted to take part in the trial to look at diversifying their income.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“You’re always looking at different options, if something else interesting comes up that can work in conjunction with the cattle, I’m definitely interested in it,” he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Powlathanga has a natural lake that irrigates the pongamia trees. (ABC Landline: Cameron Lang)<\/p>\n

Ketti Ketmontri, the project lead for SilvoPlus, said the main purpose was to test the trees with grazing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We’re looking at optimised grazing, how to produce fodder or cash crops in the interrow, and then when’s the right time to bring sheep or cattle in,” Mr Ketmontri said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Ketti Ketmontri oversees the 10ha Pongamia trial on Powlathanga. (ABC Landline: Cameron Lang)<\/p>\n

Trials across the country, nowhere to process<\/p>\n

Pongamia trials have been breaking ground across Australia over the past decade, but there is currently nowhere that processes the oil into biofuel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ed Mason, CEO of JetZero Australia, has plans to build a biorefinery in Townsville that would take agricultural products and process them into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An aerial view of the pongamia trial on Powlathanga. (ABC Landline: Cameron Lang)<\/p>\n

“We’re looking to take bioethanol and take about a hundred million litres of sustainable aviation fuel as well as renewable diesel,” he said.<\/p>\n

“That’s a material volume for Townsville, enough to supply most of the airports in the region if we were to do that.”<\/p>\n

Demand for SAF is growing, with 38 countries now having a mandate for airlines to use it.<\/p>\n

JetZero has completed road construction and land clearing at a 150ha site in Townsville, with the company expected to reach financial close at the end of this year.<\/p>\n

“It would be two years of construction and we’re trying to accelerate that and compress that as much as we can with our engineering contractors,” said Mr Mason.<\/p>\n

“First fuels will hopefully be coming by 2028.”<\/p>\n

A potential cattle feed source<\/p>\n

Scientists are looking at the nutritional value of the outside shell of pongamia seeds to be used as cattle feed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Sarah Meale has a background in animal nutrition studies. (ABC Landline: Curtis Rodda)<\/p>\n

Associate Professor from the University of Queensland Sarah Meale has just finished a study feeding ground-up pongamia husk to cattle.<\/p>\n

“The pongamia husks are the byproduct of that oil extraction. So, it’s a very cheap feed source that is really quite high in protein. So up to around 20 to 30 per cent protein.”<\/p>\n

The trial included a zero, two and four per cent inclusion rate of the ground pongamia.<\/p>\n

“Across all treatments, we have seen the exact same intake and the same growth rates, which is a really promising outcome.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The cattle spent 28 days on a ground-up pongamia husk diet. (ABC Landline: Curtis Rodda)<\/p>\n

“Right now, we know cottonseed is hard to find and very, very expensive along with other protein sources. This is the potential to replace those at a much lower cost.”<\/p>\n

Although the experiment had promising results, the lack of pongamia oil processing is a roadblock for the feed to be used more widespread.<\/p>\n

“The scale at the moment is the problem. We don’t have enough of the product to make it into the market.”<\/p>\n

Cattle to be priority<\/p>\n

On Powlathanga, Stephen Lawrie remains interested in the future of pongamia, but wants cattle to remain the focus.<\/p>\n

“Unless the trees could produce twice the amount of income as what the cattle could, we couldn’t really consider it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But if they can be run in conjunction, I think it’s a win-win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A north Queensland cattle farming family is taking part in a trial growing oil-producing trees alongside livestock.\u00a0 The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,8962,19229,99,13331],"class_list":["post-809226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beef","tag-biofuels","tag-business","tag-cattle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}