G’day there readers, Glenno’s here, hope you’re all well?

As you know, One Earth Qld are the lead distributors for PyroAg® products throughout Queensland. Although OEQ is only a few years young we have been involved with PyroAg® for close to 10 years. In fact, I have known John and Chad for over 40 years, having grown up together on the Northern Beaches of Sydney.

We thought it was the perfect time to give you guy’s a little insight into how Chad and John (and their families) came to pursue PyroAg® and BioCarbon®. It is only a smidgen of the story so far, about a 5 minute read, so check it out.

The PyroAg® Story

Chad Sheppeard and John Mellowes grew up together in and around Manly on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.  As many of you probably know Manly was and still is where country NSW goes for holidays with many of the streets named after famous properties such as Wanganella.

Chad grew up spending many holidays staying at working farms owned by family friends. His first job was spent traveling around regional NSW and QLD installing LPG to large rural properties and service stations, since then he has run and owned several successful small businesses in the marine, import export, parts distribution, internet and mechanical industries including heavy farm machinery – after selling his last business was looking for a new challenge.

John is an Engineer who runs a medium size manufacturing business.  He completed a large portion of his practical time in the regions including Dubbo, Cowra, Tumut and Coffs Harbour.  It was in these places that he gained an interest in the Agricultural Industry.  John also married a girl from Ivanhoe in Western NSW and become brother in law to a substantial farming family.

Figure 1 Early Pot Trial, Pyroligneous Acid on Left

Chad had an existing interest in renewable energy and was involved in the emerging Australian Biodiesel industry as well as an existing interest in gasification – now looking for a new challenge and John’s engineering business requiring less of his time we started to explore alternative energy further and were excited about the possibilities and growing exposure of Biochar which is where we became interested in Pyroligneous Acid (PA). We discovered by extensive research that PA was used in Japan and Thailand to aid the growth and increase the yield of crops there but were amazed that with all the research and work surrounding Biochar none was really focused on PA.

Figure 2 Early Farm Trial at Come By Chance NSW

Our literature review involved reading every published paper and article we could get our hands on.  These papers regularly provided quotes that stuck in our head, such as:

  • “As a result, by increasing bacterial quantities and inhibiting actinomycetes, wood vinegar dramatically changes the sustainability and stability of the soil ecosystem.  Evidence of applications shows that wood vinegar has good control effects against Rhizoctonia”[i]
  • “Treatments with wood vinegar at the two concentrations significantly increased the quantity of bacteria in soils and led to a significant increase in the total quantity of microbes”[i]
  •  “PA and humidity increased the BR, microbial biomass and the population growth rate (k) significantly…It is remarkable that microbes utilized PA for their metabolism…microbial population growth was much faster if the soil contained PA, because population growth was already initiated”[ii]
  •  “Biochar and Mokusakueki (Pyroligneous Acid) combining with inorganic fertilizers could improve yield, sugar content and apparent quality of sweet potato”[iii]

It could be seen from these papers that Pyroligneous Acid was having a marked effect on microbe populations in the soil by giving them an energy source in the form of organic acids and other organic compounds.

In agriculture we have a good understanding of soil chemistry but soil biology lags a long way behind.  The role of microbes in transferring nutrients to the plant is only just beginning to be understood.  Once we understood that microbes make nutrients (and other chemicals including herbicides) available to the plant and that Pyroligneous Acid encourages the microbes the light bulb went on.

We imported some product from Asia and experimented on and off for a few years by first conducting some small scale pot trials then we went to a farm scale and found that it did indeed aid in increasing plant growth and yield.

Figure 3 Early Commercial Packing

We were inspired by the sustainability and other positive environmental outcomes of manufacturing and using PA and committed to learning as much as possible about PA and in 2014 started creating a market and commercialising in Australia. We partnered with some world leading research professors on our doorstep in Newcastle who had patented a new biomass conversion technology that is way ahead of anything else and could give us the volumes and consistency we require to compete with existing commercial products in the market place.

From there we decided to refine, package and market the product.  We also assessed the product against the myriad of standards and codes that are required to sell an agricultural product in Australia.  Our manufacturing and Quality Assurance processes have been developed to ensure a consistent quality product.  We continue to discover more about the product, it’s refining and applications and it’s exciting future.

Our first successes were in South Australia’s grain belt and the Northern Rivers region of NSW.  Farmers in these regions despite very different produce, rainfalls and soil types have all gained a benefit by using PyroAg. 

We still have much to do.  Ongoing research to establish the best way of using PyroAg is underway.  We expect this research will allow our customers to better use PyroAg by applying at the optimum time and rates for each customer’s particular set of circumstances.


[i] Effects of wood vinegar on the soil microbial characteristics

Zhang Rui , Dai Wei *, Yao Zhibin , Zhao Chao and An Xiaojuan

[ii] Charcoal and smoke extract stimulate the soil microbial community in a highly weathered xanthic Ferralsol

Christoph Steiner, Keshav C. Dasb , Marcos Garciac , Bernhard Fo¨rsterd , Wolfgang Zecha

[iii] Effects of Biochar, Mokusakueki and Bokashi application on soil nutrients, yields and qualities of sweet potato

Lei Dou, Masakazu Komatsuzaki, Mitsuhiro Nakagawa ®