Azura Associates
Azura Associates is a team of bioprocess engineers dedicated to making digesters run better. Headquartered in Waterloo, Ontario, Azura serves clients throughout North & South America, Europe, and Africa.
Azura’s Principal Engineer, David Ellis has been working with anaerobic digestion and industrial wastewater treatment for over 30 years. He founded Azura in 2012 and now helps owners troubleshoot and optimize their digesters to get the most reliable biogas production. Over the past decade the team has grown to 5 full-time process engineers, with additional support staff, and the work has evolved as well. Azura assists clients through all stages of anaerobic digestion from project development and due diligence, through startup, commissioning, and optimizing operations, along with independent review and expert witness services for dispute resolution.
Most of Azura’s work is confidential, however, one success story that can be shared features an on-farm digester that wasn’t making any gas. The owner was debating whether to get rid of the digester and plant a new field when he asked Azura to take a closer look. David was able to identify the root cause of failure and optimize the biology. Following recovery, Azura provided long-term support to coach the team on self-managing operations to prevent future upsets. Not only did the digester get back up and running, but it was so successful that a few years down the road, the owner built a second digester to co-digest manure and off-farm food waste.
Overall, the Azura team is focused on the process. Azura helps clients, specifically owners, navigate through service providers to find the best solutions for their unique feedstocks. And when it comes to services like lab testing, Azura is one of the few firms that has the hands-on technical expertise to provide clients with answers not just numbers.
Azura also prioritizes education by providing operator training and continued coaching throughout projects. With the growing interest in biogas & RNG there are many professionals from different industries such as finance, legal, and insurance who need to get up to speed quickly without being weighed down with technical and scientific terms. In 2025, Azura will be launching more educational opportunities for owners, developers, operators, and other professionals, to get a better understanding of anaerobic digestion fundamentals.
Azura became a CBA member in 2016 to make connections with digester owners across the country. When asked about what keeps the membership relevant for Azura, David said “CBA is the place to be. It has been instrumental in the business, the farmer I mentioned earlier, I met him at a CBA event one cold day in Toronto. CBA is also pushing the government to move the needle on policy which is crucial – biogas is one of the only carbon negative fuels that we have; it keeps food waste out of landfills, returns nutrients to the soil, all while also creating energy security – it’s a win for everyone.”
