Welcome to Southern Humates
Southern Humates Limited is a privately owned family company based in Southland, New Zealand. In 2014, Malcolm and Ann Sinclair discovered the unique benefits which were, at that time, locked up in their lignite mine.
Initially humate was extracted solely as an addition to fertiliser for dairying throughout Southland. However, positive results of increasing grass growth was the catalyst to establish independent scientific field trials across a range of soil types in the South Island.
The results of 4 years of field trials confirmed conclusively adding Southern Humates to the fertiliser blend increased pasture growth, resulted in a science paper being peer reviewed and published in Nature Scientific Journal 2019.
The business has steadily grown and now extracts high quality humate for sales throughout New Zealand which are included in fertiliser blends or applied as a stand - alone soil conditioner either premium or fine grades.
Recent developments include a bagging plant for stock food and processing extracted humate into a liquid form for the cropping and horticulture farming sectors.
Malcolm and Ann, through their commitment and vision are now providing employment to local families.
Southern Humates employs responsible and sustainable quality management principles for the
extraction and processing of their humate resource.
Southern Humates, based in Southland, New Zealand is a shallow excavation, without over-height pit walls and with batter and slope angles that are not excessive in relation to the strength performance of the exposed silt/clay/gravel overburden and humate seam. Sustainable methods of extraction are applied ensuring minimum disturbance to the surrounding areas and limiting geotechnical distress to the working highwalls. Upon extraction the material is naturally dried, screened and bagged for distribution. No further treatments are required. Once overall excavation depth has been satisfied the remainder of the seam is flooded which re-commences the regenerative process.
Learn more of the benefits of humates for animal and soil health on the following pages.
Don Hart Founder and CEO of Top Soils in Methven, specialises in soil fertility programmes for all soils and farming operations. “Southern Humates have been supplying us with quality humates for the last six years. We include humates in all our fertiliser blends and aim to have at least 10% of fertiliser used in the form of humates”
Jeff Broomfield, biological soil and fertiliser consultant, has used humates for the past 18 years within his farm fertiliser programme. The success he has observed on the various farming operations are similar to the results from the Southern Humates trials, where production from a conventional product increased by more than 30% when humates were added to it.