GrowUp Farms

This interview details GrowUp Farms, an indoor farming company based in the UK. The interview is with Kate Hofman, Founder & Brand Director of GrowUp Farms.

‍

‍

What is the origin story of GrowUp Farms?

‍

GrowUp Farms story began 10 years ago when Kate Hofman met Tom Webster and they founded GrowUp Farms in a small unit in London, combining new and existing technology to grow leaves that tasted better, lasted longer, and reduced the environmental impact of getting healthy food on to people’s plates. 

‍

‍

Within a short time, GrowUp Farms was supplying Borough Market and London restaurants with the salad they had grown in a controlled environment in their small London unit.

Kate and Tom became pioneers in controlled environment farming in London initially with a harvest from their urban farm venture. Salad was grown using aquaponics, which means taking waste from a fish farm and pumping it through to hydroponic vertically-stacked growing benches – which grow produce in a nutrient solution without soil. The light, water, temperature, and humidity of this environment were all controlled.

‍

‍

Kate and Tom's passion for sustainability and solving food production problems, their pioneering spirit, openness to new ideas, and their tenacity, have brought it over the past decade to this point: the vertical farm in Kent backed by £100m of equity and selling salads to consumers, via supermarkets. The salad is better tasting, and longer lasting, which means lower wastage. It is grown all year round in the UK, with zero pesticides, zero chlorine washing, and 94% water savings.

‍

Thinking about where our food comes from, what it’s taken to produce it, and what we choose to eat is one of the biggest opportunities we have as individuals to make a positive impact on the world. GrowUp Farms' purpose is to provide better food for all, and its mission is the world’s best plants grown better.

‍

‍

What are some of the biggest challenges facing GrowUp Farms in the future?

‍

The demand for produce grown in the UK 365 days a year is going to increase significantly over the next decade and while we believe we can meet this challenge commercially, we will need the support of the government to help us achieve this by putting vertical farming on a level playing field with traditional farming.

GrowUp Farms is delivering on many of the Government's major policy objectives to make farming better for the environment and boost green jobs and investment in the agricultural sector. Under the 'Sustainable Farming Incentive' in Environmental Land Management Schemes, farmers are paid to improve their farming practices and reduce pre-existing problems to deliver the government’s 25-year Environment Plan, which includes setting goals to use less water, less nitrogen, producing less waste and with zero agricultural runoff and no pesticides.

‍

Vertical farming can help enable England to meet its environmental goals much more quickly, however, there is currently no way for vertical farms to access government support for delivering these environmental benefits.

If vertical farming continues to be treated as an emerging technology, we are missing a vital opportunity to grow the industry, create a sustainable and long-lasting supply chain, and deliver the outcomes laid out in the government’s 25-year Environment Plan. The extension of ELMS to include vertical farming would create a level playing field for more farming techniques that produce high-quality food and take care of the environment.

‍

‍

What is unique about GrowUp Farms compared to competitors?

‍

What is unique about GrowUp Farms is our energy model. For grid-connected vertical farms, rising energy prices are making it particularly hard to be commercially viable, as vertical farms rely heavily on electricity for lighting, heating, cooling, and automation to grow crops year-round in the UK.

‍

Our business model addresses the energy challenge faced by vertical farms. The answer was to locate our vertical farm in Kent, next door to a sustainable energy source. The cost of energy is one of the biggest expenses for vertical farms. Back in 2021, electricity would have accounted for around 25% of a typical vertical farm's operating costs, but this has now risen to up to 50%. At full operations, our vertical farm uses 40% less electricity than a grid-connected vertical farm.

‍

‍

Our energy model will help to support us in expanding our production into other sites across the UK and growing more fresh produce. Our vertical farms are already playing a key role in solving a big consumer problem by growing salad in the UK that stays fresher for longer and doesn’t rely on overseas imports that are vulnerable to unpredictable climate changes and supply chain issues. Our sustainable energy source will really help us to drive the business forward.

‍

We also use 94% less water than traditional farming methods, and we have just received a Growing Kent and Medway’s ‘Business Sustainability Challenge’ grant which has given us the chance to trial some new, disruptive technology created by Salinity Solutions which dramatically reduces the environmental footprint of water treatment.

‍

Salinity Solutions’ ground-breaking batch reverse osmosis technology – the first in the world to be manufactured commercially – could have a major impact on reducing wastewater, not only in the food sector but in many other sectors around the world, helping to solve the emerging global water crisis.

‍

‍

What is the current size of your growing area?

‍

GrowUp Farms have taken a five0acre brownfield site and are creating the equivalent of 1,000 acres of grade 1 farmland.

‍

Do you use CO2 in your operation today -- if so, how much and what do you pay for it? What are your thoughts in CO2 usage in indoor farms?

‍

We pride ourselves on being a low-carbon salad producer. Using bottled CO2 in a fully indoor farm is necessary because it is a sealed environment, and there is not enough CO2 in ambient air to maintain a ready supply for the plants to grow. Bottled CO2 can be used to manipulate the growing climate on our farm, which enables us to create the perfect conditions for our plants to grow, and therefore we can grow more quickly. This helps to boost yield which makes the whole growing process more efficient, helping us to reduce water use, energy use, nutrient use, and waste for each growing cycle which in turn reduces carbon emissions.

‍

The bottled CO2 that we use is a byproduct of anaerobic digester energy production, which means that it is more sustainable than other sources such as CO2 produced from ammonia manufacture. 

‍

‍

We have measured the greenhouse gas emissions that are generated from (or associated with) our operations in significant detail. While some of the bottled CO2 that we use in our farms will inevitably escape into the atmosphere, it constitutes a very small fraction of our overall greenhouse gas budget. We are focusing our efforts to cut carbon in larger areas of our carbon budget such as those associated with the materials that we use to package our salad before we target our bottled CO2 use.  

‍

Nevertheless, we are constantly looking at ways to improve the sustainability of how we grow. One initiative we are exploring is using technology that allows us to harvest and bottle CO2 on-site, directly from the air. 

‍

And this year, we became the first Approved Partner of carbon units generated by the Heather Corrie Vale wilding project, which is located on a former abandoned golf course in the Darenth Valley in Kent, close to our farm in Sandwich.

‍

The wilding project is certified under the Wilder Carbon Standard for Nature and Climate, a not-for-profit natural climate solution, for which Kent Wildlife Trust is a Trusted Deliverer.

‍

Heather Corrie Vale is one of the first live Wilder Carbon projects and GrowUp Farms will directly contribute towards the transformation of the site. As an Approved Buyer, GrowUp Farms has shown that it meets the Wilder Carbon Standard, which ensures that only those businesses that are taking steps to demonstrably reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change can be involved.

‍

‍

How can people connect with you or learn more about GrowUp Farms?

‍

Our website contains all the latest news from us, and we have social media channels on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Linkedin are also a great up-to-date source of news from us.

‍

And in 2024, our team at GrowUp Farms will be out and about at conferences and exhibitions throughout the year.

‍

Instagram: growupfarmsuk

X: @GrowUp_Farms

YouTube: @growupfarms

Linkedin: GrowUp Farms

‍

‍

* Cindy van Rijswick - analyst at Rabobank, for Shifted - wrote a study in 2021 saying electricity is the most important cost for vertical farms and accounts for at least 25% of business expenses.  However, this estimate was made before Europe faced rising energy costs due to the war in Ukraine.

‍

**Specialist at LettUs Grow, a technical outfitter for vertical farms says electricity accounts for an average of 40-50% of production costs in vertical farming.

‍

‍