Poultry Biogas Digesters

The ask

Install, operate, and maintain fixed-dome biogas digesters at commercial poultry farms across Bangladesh, converting chicken manure into cooking gas or electricity for on-farm use, with digestate sold as organic fertilizer.

Why now

Bangladesh's poultry sector has grown to over 350 million birds; large commercial farms of 10,000–50,000 birds generate manure volumes that are increasingly a disposal liability under tightening environmental rules. The digester technology is mature and Chinese-manufactured plants are now 40% cheaper than five years ago. Gas LPG prices have risen sharply, sharpening on-farm energy savings economics.

Why Bangladesh

The poultry belt running from Gazipur to Mymensingh is dense with commercial broiler and layer farms that currently pay to dispose of manure or simply pile it, creating surface-water contamination. A digester that eliminates disposal cost, cuts LPG bills, and produces bagged organic fertilizer for sale hits three P&L lines simultaneously. Local fabricators can produce fixed-dome shells at a fraction of import cost.

As a business

The model is equipment-as-a-service or outright sale with a 2-year maintenance contract: a farm pays a deposit plus monthly fee, and the operator takes a cut of fertilizer revenue. Margins come from the fertilizer stream — bagged digestate commands ৳8–12/kg vs. near-zero value as raw manure. A service network of 50 farms creates recurring maintenance revenue that smooths the capital cycle.

Economics

Move the sliders to model your own digester deployment. Defaults are order-of-magnitude estimates — pressure-testing them is part of what a founder pitches us.

What ZEPH would back

A founder with agricultural sector relationships who can close a pipeline of 10+ farm contracts before raising a full round — the unit economics only work at volume, and the risk is sales cycle length, not technology. An equipment-leasing structure that keeps farms off a large upfront capex is preferred.

Impact

A 20 000-bird digester captures roughly 200–250 m³ of biogas per day, replacing LPG and fuel oil in farm operations and avoiding approximately 30 tCO₂e per year in direct combustion emissions plus 15–20 tCO₂e from avoided methane release from open manure lagoons (methane is 84× CO₂e over 20 years). Digestate sold as organic fertiliser displaces urea, cutting both farmer costs and the synthetic-nitrogen import bill; Bangladesh imports over 1.5 million tonnes of urea annually, and each tonne of digestate-nitrogen substituted avoids approximately 7 kg CO₂e of upstream manufacturing. At Bangladesh's 350 million-bird poultry sector, full adoption of on-farm digesters represents one of the largest single methane-abatement opportunities in the country.