Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Forget soil! New start-up is growing plants in mist
FOR centuries farmers have known that looking after your soil is an investment that pays a huge dividend come harvest time.
But a revolutionary Bristol start-up company has received £1 million in funding to grow plants in a rather different material – mist.
LettUs Grow has developed irrigation technology for sustainable indoor farming.
The firm, which is based on Kingsland Road in the St Philip’s area of the city, aims to reduce the waste and carbon footprint of fresh produce by encouraging ‘vertical urban farming’, where food can be grown near its point of consumption.
Instead of using soil, plant roots are suspended in a nutrient-dense mist, which results in faster growth rates and a 95 per cent reduction in water usage compared to open-field farming.
National innovation agency Innovate UK has awarded the agri-tech company a grant of £399,650 to lead a £700,000 project aimed at increasing food resilience and security in the face of climate change.
LettUs Grow will work alongside Bristol-based refrigeration specialists ECH Engineering and urban agriculture experts from Grow Bristol. The company has also received a further 100,000 euro from the Postcode Lotteries Green Challenge – a yearly competition in sustainable innovation – and several additional research grants.
The grants come hot on the heels of the start-up’s most recent investment round, where the company raised £460,000 from investors ClearlySo, Bethnal Green Ventures and the University of Bristol Enterprise Fund II.
The cash injection has allowed Lettus Grow to scale operations and focus on product development.
Charlie Guy, co-founder and man- aging director, said: “This injection of private and public funding into the company enables us to accelerate our innovative products to market and build one of the most technically advanced facilities for indoor growing in the world.
“The global agri-tech industry is very exciting right now, all stemming from the necessity to improve the economic and environmental sustainability of food production.
“We are fielding inquiries from all around the world from food producers and farmers who want to experience the benefits of our technology across a growing range of crops.”
Humanity must increase food production by 70 per cent by 2050 to feed an estimated nine billion people, according to Lettus Grow.
Charlie said: “Existing methods of agriculture will not be enough to feed this burgeoning global popula- tion with 25 per cent less farmland, degraded soil quality, and an ever more unstable climate.
“Alongside this, most ‘fresh’ pro- duce is imported out of season, often travelling hundreds of miles to reach consumers and resulting in colossal waste throughout the supply chain.
“To help solve this problem, LettUs Grow has designed a patentpending aeroponic system that has shown growth rate increases of more than 70 per cent compared to existing solutions for leafy greens, salads and herb production.”
Matias Wibowo, investment manager at ClearlySo, added: “Innovation is critical to ensuring long-term food security and sustainability.
“Our investors see the value, both in terms of financial and environmental/social returns from tackling this systemic global problem.
“LettUs Grow provides the technological innovation piece to the vertical smart farming movement that is currently trending rapidly in the urban context.”