Australia’s largest compost-based revegetation project delivered

Australia’s largest compost-based revegetation project, by size, has been successfully delivered by NuGrow on the $1.6 billion, 41km Toowoomba Second Range Crossing (TSRC) in Queensland for project contractor Nexus and primary landscaper HL Landscapes.

The team is celebrating delivering a whopping 70 hectares of NuGrow’s hydrocompost (Hydroganics) and organics blanket (Growganics) solutions since September 2017.

HL Landscapes’ Director, Lucas Piperides, said TSRC was the largest infrastructure project undertaken by his company in the last 45 years.

It features some of the tallest roadside batters worldwide, with the largest being nearly 100m tall on a 45º slope with eight benches (terraces) and a total area of 3 hectares on either side of the road.

“With extreme cut and fill batters, we faced challenges like safe access, and working with substrates and reinforcement mesh that prevented conventional revegetation methods,” Lucas said.

“NuGrow worked with us from the start to overcome these, introducing new, innovative methods to meet project needs, and delivering a simple, smooth service despite tough conditions,” he said.

The region has endured less than 20 percent of its average annual rainfall across the two-year period and yet native vegetation and perennial grasses are establishing well.

“Given the severe drought conditions, the results from NuGrow’s work have met and exceeded expectations. We look forward to introducing their innovations on future projects,” Lucas said.

“NuGrow’s revegetation team is industry leading, working with us to ensure our clients are getting the best value for money on the biggest projects across Australia.”

Revegetation works followed a staged schedule of hundreds of applications across more than 14,000 manhours to support the project’s infrastructure complexity – ramping up over the last few months to apply the finishing touches.

NuGrow’s Manager of Revegetation Services, Ben Brown, said it will go down in history as one of the most challenging sites ever revegetated in Queensland due to the scale of the cuttings and the various subgrades all successfully treated.

“It has been a privilege to be part of such an iconic project and we are grateful to HL Landscapes and Nexus for giving our team the opportunity to contribute our expertise to their impressive delivery of this landmark infrastructure,” Ben said.

“What excites us is that road users will see dense vegetation growing in years to come knowing that, behind the scenes, it’s the result of a true circular economy – with about 25,000 tonnes of waste recycled into 11,000m³of high-grade compost, applied over the 70 hectares we’ve delivered,” he said.

“On behalf of HL Landscapes and Nexus, that’s a legacy our team is extremely proud to have contributed to.”