‘My facility is closer to a surgeon’s operating theatre than it is to a field’

Fran McKeown has no family history or formal training in horticulture but that hasn’t stopped him operating a successful vertical farming business growing microgreens such as pea shoots and parsley.

Although Covid-19 has forced him to suspend production at his warehouse facility in Castletown, Co Meath, Irish Microgreens had gone from strength to strength in recent years.

“We’ve shut down operations,” Fran says. “We were exclusively supplying restaurants… my orders went from 1,000 boxes a week to zero within a few days. I’ve had to let my two staff members go.

“I’m still flat-out because we had planned on going into retail soon, but that’s all on the back burner.

“I’m trying to keep things going so we can hit the ground running when normality resumes.

“We’re all indoors and we’ve concentrated on the food service. When I started five years ago, I wasn’t ready for retail because it’s a much bigger market than food service for us.”

Having worked in sales and business development in the construction industry for the best part of 10 years, Fran found himself unemployed after the crash of 2009/10.

“The crash pulled the rug out from under me, and I lost my job, so to occupy my mind I started doing bits in the garden,” he says. “I was suffering from depression. I started doing more and more gardening, which was great for my mental health.

“Autumn rolled in and I started losing light so I added lights to the tunnel, but then it wasn’t warm enough so I added heat. It was costing a fortune to heat, so I covered it with insulation and was growing greens in December, so I rang around and asked buyers would they be interested in it and they were, so it started from there.

“I was supplying 60 boxes a week. I outgrew my polytunnel so I started renting an old mushroom farm down the road and repurposed it, and I have been flat-out ever since.

“My first little polytunnel in the back garden was around 200 square feet; now I have 6,000 square feet grow space, a 3,000 square foot production area and a 3,000 square foot workshop as well as an office, canteen and a delivery truck, We’re growing all the time.

“Our big advantage is that the growing conditions are completely under our control. A lot of greenhouses use a lot of chemicals and are dependent on the weather. We don’t use any herbicides, fungicides etc. It’s an enclosed growing environment.

“My facility is closer to a surgeon’s operating theatre than it is to a field. We have a food safety plan that has everything clean around the clock.

“When I started there were a few growers supplying restaurants, but they could only supply for six months of the year imported products for the rest of the year. Restaurants want consistency.

“I found growing under natural conditions that if there’s good weather, stuff will be ready ahead of time, which will mean it’s already a few days old when a customer gets it, and there’s delays if conditions are bad.

“With us, everything is ready when it’s supposed to be ready. It might sound unnatural, but we give the plants exactly what they want when they want it. As a result, our USP (unique selling point) is that we can give you what you want when you want it 365 days of the year. We’ve never had a supply issue once in our five years and it’s a great promise to be able to offer customers.

“Customers were dubious over this promise, especially when we started, but we’ve never skipped a beat, so they trust us now.

“We operate a very standardised system. Every day of the week is different. We deliver twice a week, so we sow and harvest twice a week as well as clean, prep etc.

“It also means our working day is 9-5 because we aren’t contending with the same obstacles you have in traditional horticulture such as the weather etc.

“Our system means we have higher costs but claw it back by having higher outputs.”

Despite the initial blow, Fran thinks the pandemic may benefit his business in the long term.

“The one silver lining to this is that when it’s all over there’ll be a spotlight on food security, food

The great indoors:

‘Vertical farmer’ Fran McKeown from Irish Micro Greens in the now empty grow house at his production warehouses at Castletown, Navan, Co Meath. safety and buying local, and we tick a lot of those boxes.”

Fran does not bow to the perceived wisdom of those who followed the traditional route into the industry he doesn’t feel he missed out by not having a degree in horticulture

“There’s nothing that can’t be learned off YouTube,” he says. “I also find that when you get a degree it makes you the same as everyone else… it’s important to set yourself apart from everyone else.

“People in the industry told me what I do wasn’t going to work. But I now pay two full-time staff as well as myself and have a driver working a few days a week.”

Away from work, Fran is an MMA enthusiast; he has a number of fights under his belt which he stopped when his children Fionn and Caoimhe were born.

“I couldn’t keep up with the training required it was too much with the business and the kids,” he says.

He also had a podcast called Off The Lead “pushing back against the domestication of our species”

which ran for two years and had listeners in over 50 countries.

“I’m mad keen to get it up and running again. I’m looking at developing a podcast studio I can pick up with the forklift and bring around the place.”

‘With us, everything is ready when it’s supposed to be ready. It might sound unnatural, but we give the plants exactly what they want when they want it’