IndustrialChris ThomsonTue 30 Jun 26
Margaret River Vintner Plots $400m High-Tech Food Export Precinct
A vigneron from Western Australia’s Margaret River wine region is proposing a $400-million circular-economy food, fertiliser and renewable energy precinct in an agricultural district 60km south of Perth.
Steve Palmer—who in 1977 co-founded Palmer Wines at the holiday hotspot of Dunsborough, 250km south of the WA capital—is a director of Perth Foodbowl Corporation. Closer to Perth, the company is now planning the Peel Agri-Bio Innovation Precinct at Keralup in the Peel region that adjoins the metropolitan area.
If approved by the Western Australian Planning Commission, the precinct would include a 33,315sq m plant that would use a process owned by the firm Mycolizer (also co-directed by Palmer) to propegate mycelium, the root-like part of a fungus. The mycelium would be packaged for distribution as a bio-fertiliser.
A research centre would be included in the plant.
About 14,000sq m of the plant’s roof area would be covered by photovoltaic solar panels whose energy production would be supplemented by a $24-million, 6.4MW solar farm. The $115-million bio-fertiliser plant would operate around the clock, seven days a week.
The precinct would also have a $200-million greenhouse with a 20ha production area configured as four 5ha production modules to grow tomatoes, capsicum and berries. The massive greenhouse would dispatch produce daily to Perth, nationally and for counter-seasonal export to Asian and Middle Eastern countries.
Rounding out the precinct, designed by Perth-based With Architecture, would be a $60-million, 6405sq m plant that would convert residues from the greehouses’s crops into biochar.
The up-to-30,000 tonnes of biochar produced each year would be used as low-carbon road construction materials and in regenerative agriculture. Waste thermal energy from this aspect of the precinct would be recovered.
Perth Foodbowl Corporation holds the site—which abuts agricultural land to its north and east—on a long-term lease from government agency DevelopmentWA that has deemed the land suitable for a food production precinct.
Palmer was contacted for comment for this story. Public comment on his planned Peel agri-bio innovation precinct is open until July 23.
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