A CHICKEN litter fuelled biomass boiler is to be installed in north Herefordshire, the first of its type to get planning consent in the county.

The planning permission for the boiler was achieved by Berrys working with another county firm Energy Innovations and will bring huge benefits to the farm and the local environment.

“This technologically advanced installation will reduce the spreading of the poultry litter and the potential run off from the fields in the surrounding area whilst providing the farmer with free fuel to power the poultry unit, replacing natural gas and woodchip,” explained Ben Corbett, partner at the Hereford office of Berrys at Kinnersley.

“This is the first of a number of possibilities in Herefordshire for these combined heat and power chicken litter burners which will usually utilise all of the chicken litter generated on the unit to heat and power the site.

“The technology has huge benefits for the wider environment as chicken litter will no longer need to be stored and spread away from the farm . This will reduce the traffic to and from the site moving the litter and also the wood chip previously bought in to fuel the old biomass burner which the new unit will replace,” he said.

The new biomass boiler will be able to take in excess 4,000 tonnes of poultry litter to utilise all the manure from the north Herefordshire farm’s 450,000 broilers.