Gurban

This interview details Gurban, an indoor farming company based in Country Spain. The interview is with Pelayo Bolivar, General Manager at Gurban.

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What is the origin story of Gurban?

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Gurban was born in the heart of a family business group with origin and base in Madrid, Spain, with more than 30 years of experience in the financial sector and a great eagerness for entrepreneurship and new challenges. With this and the more than evident challenge of sustainability in the food supply chain, we decided to embark ourselves into the world of controlled environment agriculture, and more specifically through vertical farming in shipping containers.

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These beginnings helped us not only to have an accelerated learning curve on growing systems, methods and so on but also to get to know the market (Spain has nothing to do with other markets such as the American, British or Swedish, to mention a few).

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This knowledge of the market has led us to better understand what kind of product is demanded in our country, placing value on local consumption, the proximity and freshness that this brings, as well as the environmental advantages that a crop of this kind can have towards the end consumer and the planet after all.

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We have also learned that not everything is a “bed of roses” and not everything is as good as it is said in vertical farming and that there are many challenges still to be addressed in our sector: electricity consumption (in Spain the price of electricity is very expensive), labor costs, provision of recurring quality seeds, education of end consumers, use of sunlight as a valuable resource in our country ... and so on, just to mention a few.

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What are some of the biggest challenges facing Gurban in the future? 

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The biggest challenges we are currently facing can be divided into two sections:

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• Productive capacity: we have found a market niche in certain products that we know they have market traction at a distributors level that allow us to reach high sales levels and end customers that we would find it difficult to reach directly. Under this situation of high demand for local products, we are faced with the magnificent challenge of meeting and addressing it. This means increasing our cultivation systems (we are already on our third container) and diversifying cultivation platforms, as well as hiring people and investing in the entire process from seed to delivery.

• Electricity consumption: the second biggest challenge we face today is to mitigate the great impact that electricity consumption has on our costs. The price of electricity in Spain, as I mentioned before, is very high and very unpredictable. Relying on alternative renewable energy solutions is the way to reduce the electricity bill while being a little more sustainable. Solar energy, aerothermal, geothermal? We don't know which but we know where to look to find the solution. 

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That said, the day-to-day is what drives us, as well as our strategic objectives, but every day is a new challenge where you have to know how to lead your team, try to do your job the best you can, and deliver consistently high-quality products to your customers. This in itself is a daily challenge.

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What is unique about Gurban compared to competitors?

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I think what makes us unique in Gurban compared to our competitors is our close relationship with our customers (we see them frequently, we try to understand their changing needs, adapt to those changes, and be more of a partner than a simple supplier), our willingness to not depend on third parties when producing, which allows us to have full control over the process (even if this means going a little slower in the process), and finally combining this, our great ability to adapt to situations and the speed with which we maneuver.

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I do not want to forget to say that our product is of great quality, that it is treated and made with love and dedication, and that it is 100% local from the Community of Madrid. This is a source of pride for us, knowing that we have here one of the best and largest fruit and vegetable distribution markets in Europe, Mercamadrid, just 15 minutes away from our crops.

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What are some other relevant metrics of the company (growing area size, production quantity, team size, etc.)?

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In the last year, we have grown in terms of cultivation platforms, going from one shipping container to three of them, and planning to expand the square meters of cultivation to 5000 in 2024. On the other hand, we are growing in sales volume per kg of products sold (+500% since last year), and in number of customers, from restaurants to large distributors or large retail stores in 2024. 

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Last but not least, the team is growing. The more work we do, the more teams we need, and we are proud to be able to incorporate excellent people who are involved in the project and who like what they do and understand it.

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What are some goals in 2024 and beyond for Gurban?

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Our objectives beyond 2024 are to establish ourselves as a benchmark for leafy greens, microgreens, and other local products in our Autonomous Community, but also to expand to other large cities in the country, taking our crops to those cities so as not to lose the local production factor.  And who knows if internationalization will come within that… We´ll see.

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How can people connect with you or learn more about Gurban?

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People can learn more about what we do on our website (gurban.es), by following us on LinkedIn, or through our social networks, where we will start posting and showing in detail what we do from January next year.

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Besides our recent appearances on national television, I think they reflect our work quite well. You can find them posted on our social media. Anyway, we are always open to training sessions for groups and visits, something we have already done several times for both agronomy students and high schools.

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