Top Fieldays award set in stone

Blue Pacific Minerals StockRock product manager Shane Smith.

Tokoroa-based Blue Pacific Minerals' StockRock site impressed the judges at this year's National Fieldays in Hamilton, winning the Best Innovative Showcase Site Award from a competitive field of more than 1000 sites.

"The theme for the 2016 Fieldays was Collaborate to Accelerate Innovation, so we are particularly thrilled to have won this prestigious accolade," said StockRock product manager Shane Smith.

"Recognising innovation in the agricultural sector is at the heart of the event, so to have topped the field in this award category is fantastic news."

StockRock is a farm race material which the company says helps reduce lameness in cows.

StockRock has been exhibiting at Fieldays since 2006 and Mr Smith aims for a new theme each year.

This year's site featured the launch of a new landscaping rock, Ngakuru Stone, as a feature design element of the site.

Ngakuru Stone is a lightweight, creamy-hued volcanic rock suitable for many applications from garden ground cover to individual design feature rocks.

Both StockRock and Ngakuru Stone are produced by multi-mineral extraction and processing company Blue Pacific Minerals, which recently completed an $11 million processing expansion.

The company is New Zealand's largest processor of Zeolite and Perlite ore, natural minerals extracted from quarries owned by BPM. The Zeolite comes from an opencast mine 20km south of Rotorua at Ngakuru, and the Perlite from a mine on forestry land just south of Tokoroa.

The minerals have wide uses for domestic, commercial, agricultural and industrial applications in both New Zealand and internationally. As much as 99 per cent of the perlite is exported.