January 14, 2020

By Lynda Kiernan

British vertical and indoor farming technology startup LettUs Grow has raised £2.35 million (US$3 million) in funding led by Longwall Venture Partners. 

This round also included follow-on participation from Bristol Enterprise Fund, which is managed by Parkwalk, Green Ventures, and ClearlySo.

Founded in 2015 by University of Bristol students Charlie Guy, the aptly-named Jack Farmer, and Ben Crowther, LettUs Grow was launched with the mission to answer some of the key challenges facing the world’s food systems: food security, CO2 emissions, food waste, and ecosystem endangerment. 

Toward this end, the team at LettUs Grow has developed a patent-pending, aeroponic tech system that has shown to produce leafy greens, salad crops, and herbs at a growth rate that is 70 percent above existing solutions. Through its platform, which needs no fertile land and uses zero pesticides, crops are grown with their roots suspended in a nutrient-dense mist, resulting in growth rates that surpass conventional hydroponics, and produce predictable and consistent yields without the use of chemicals, all while using 95 percent less water compared to traditional farming.

This novel aeroponic system is linked to an integrated farm management software platform called Ostara, that automates and controls the entire indoor farm while also collecting crop data, overseeing inputs, monitoring crop growth, and raising efficiency by tracing crops from seed to sale.

Last year the team built one of the world’s most advanced indoor aeroponic indoor farms, and has established a pipeline of sales with key clients, according to the company. Having designed a system that is modular, aeroponic, and including intelligent management that together raise return on investment has positioned LettUs Grow to meet the growing demand for technologies that allow for agricultural production in a manner that doesn’t exacerbate climate change.

“Food security is an emerging major international challenge, especially in this era of unpredictable climate that we are now entering,” said Rebecca Todd, investment director, Longwall Ventures. “We at Longwall are excited to be backing LettUs Grow in the development of game-changing technology that has the potential to make a real difference by making food growing more efficient, predictable, controllable and local.”

It is the ability of indoor farming to meet and alleviate these challenges that is driving the market to be expected to exceed a value of US$6 billion by 2022. And as the industry scales up and proves out how it can answer multiple challenges from traditional long transport systems, to food waste, to water conservation, to food contamination, to growing food in urban food deserts, so have the funding rounds.

“This investment gives us a platform to really accelerate in 2020 and scale-up the delivery of our game-changing technology to farmers across the country,” said Charlie Guy, co-founder and managing director, LettUs Grow. “We’re seeing rising demand from around the world for new technologies to help farmers grow crops in ways that mitigate against the effects of climate change and ever-increasing extreme weather events.”

Recently, the UK has been the center of more indoor and vertical farming projects that have been securing increasingly high-profile rounds earning larger capital commitments. June 2019 saw two UK deals – S2G Ventures led a £5.4 million (US$6.8 million) Series A for Scottish agtech startup Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS) to advance the company’s ground-breaking automated technology for the indoor farming industry. The Scottish Investment Bank (SIB) and AgFunder also participated in the round.

Based in Dundee, IGS offers what it refers to as a “plug-and-play” IoT-enabled vertical farming system. The startup’s novel technology is designed to address some of the widely-faced economic and operational challenges in the vertical farming industry, including scarce labor, the cost of power, and the difficulties of consistency in production at scale.

That same month, Britain’s Ocado, the world’s largest online grocery retailer, made its first venture into vertical farming with a pair of agreements representing a total investment of £17 million (US$22 million).

Following, in November of last year, London-based food tech company Vertical Future announced it had raised US$5 million in initial funding led by impact investor Earthworm Capital, and supported by corporate finance advisor Acceleris Capital, Amberley Advisory, and Gateley.

– Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to the GAI News and Agtech Intel platforms. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.