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Vertical Farming Shake-Up: Major Players Go Bust · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hi there, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
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  I'm just going to give you an update on the vertical farming sector because
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  there's been some really important updates, certainly here in the UK,
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  and that is that the Jones Food Company, which have two large vertical farms,
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  has gone into administration and they had a farm in Lincolnshire and one in Gloucestershire.
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  I won't speculate on what administration and
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  bankruptcy and all all this means because it means different things
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  in different countries so don't sue me okay so
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  they've gone into administration they're likely.
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  Going to cease operation i think from reading what it
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  says and they join the likes of plenty
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  and bowery is in the large
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  unicorns companies that are valued over a billion dollars
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  going into bankruptcy or administration so big
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  issues and for the sector and you
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  know lack of confidence will and and this
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  will you know send shockwaves around the vertical farming sector
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  really because this is this big news major supplier
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  to uk supermarkets that has gone
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  into administration plenty did the same i
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  think late in march this year and they were not
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  just valued at a billion dollars they actually raised a
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  billion dollars from loads of investments so for them
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  to go that was a massive one and then Bowery
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  were the same but last year I believe they went.
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  Into administration or went bankrupt so so
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  they ceased operations in November 2024 so these
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  have all been very recently and it must
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  be something to do with the sort of capital markets
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  the investors really pulling the plug on this
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  not seeing the profits that they needed and it's
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  certainly been a step change when you listen to tech podcasts and
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  tech news this this move away from growth
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  at all costs the sort of blitz scaling method of startups that sort of reed
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  hoffman and linkedin and his like promoted you know before lockdown and during
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  lockdown this has now changed and now profit is key to that.
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  So the likes of Bowery Farms with their investments from Justin Timberlake and
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  Natalie Portman and many others less high profile investors,
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  they've gone by the wayside.
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  It's not the death knell of vertical farming. There are still plenty of other
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  companies doing vertical farming and there are large warehouses in the UK that
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  are growing leafy vegetables.
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  However, you have to have something really unique.
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  Or a really tight business model to make
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  it work that's because it's not like
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  an iphone or a tesla car
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  this technology is producing a
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  lettuce and a lettuce you're making a couple of pence a
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  couple of cent on every head that
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  you create and so the margins
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  are small it might be high tech and it might involve lots of
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  technology and lots of engineering lots of systems but
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  at the end of the day you're producing something with a crazily small
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  margin and you know if
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  i was investor in the the city of london or wall street
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  that's what i would be looking at so i would have to have there'd
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  have to be some really unique selling point and some of them do
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  have you know some unique technology there but you
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  want to be careful it's not just someone who's decided they want to engineer a
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  giant farm and i i was involved
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  in one of the companies it's called
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  fisher farms they're still going they've got massive they're probably
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  a unicorn they've got a massive farm in Norwich
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  I was involved very very early stages when there
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  was only four people and I got how basically
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  I my job was going to be being involved in making sure the optimizing the crop
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  getting the nutrients set up and the fertigation set up and get everything right
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  so the plants grew so I had all the risk everyone else was just had different
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  jobs and the the guy Tristan Fisher I think his.
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  He was always like yeah you'll get shares you'll get shares and
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  i was like okay but i'm involved all this risk you know
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  if you know if all the plants die that's on me so you
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  know what how much shares am i actually going to get and then about seven months
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  later he said oh yeah you'll be getting like 0.0000001 percent
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  of the company i was like nope thank you very much
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  that doesn't sound good to me and wouldn't even
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  negotiate because that was just crazy because at the end of the day growing
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  the crop is the key the key issue and you know the people from like the lee
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  growers association as soon as jones food company went into administration they
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  were like told you so he might.