Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Vertical Farming Agony: Vertical Future Goes Bankrupt

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Vertical Farming Agony: Vertical Future Goes Bankrupt · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything
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  soilless cultivation. I'm your host, Dr.
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  Russell Sharp, and I come to you live from a lock in Scotland.
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  A very beautiful lock in the highlands of Scotland, and normally I would be
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  indoors to record a podcast, but I'm in my car because last night I stayed in
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  the world's worst hotel,
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  quite unbelievably glad.
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  So I was planning on recording a couple of podcasts, but that was quickly put out the window.
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  So I'm now taking five minutes away from a wedding in the Scottish Highlands,
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  just because I don't want to miss my target of recording a podcast episode every day in 2025.
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  So yes, this is Hydroponics Daily.
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  And I thought I'd do the podcast on some breaking news in hydroponics,
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  particularly vertical farming.
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  And that is that the company Vertical Future has,
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  well, I don't know if there were, I always get a bit
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  confused on this like filing for bankruptcy or or
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  whether something's gone insolvent or is in administration things like
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  this but basically it's you have to be careful with this because you're
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  never quite sure whether someone's very litigious something like that
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  but basically vertical future has is for
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  sale and through bankruptcy proceedings so
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  it's joined a long list of indoor ag startups that declared bankruptcy
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  or shuttered operations in the last few years including
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  in farm freight farm so there's
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  the and you know one-time unicorns
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  bowery and plenty so this
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  is another big failure in
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  the in the vertical farming sector there are still a number of companies still
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  operating in there and hopefully with less competition they can be increase
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  their profitability and so it's not the death knell of vertical farming companies
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  like grow up in the uk they're very profitable they've got a focus on using.
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  Regenerate renewable energy for the production of
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  the aggie veg apologies for that noise that's just my bobblehead
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  king charles that has fallen off my dashboard
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  i tried to keep it from constantly bobbling
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  and it's decided to stop just to fall off yeah so
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  vertical future has has is for sale
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  through bankruptcy it's made a massive loss it's made 10 million pounds loss
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  for or 13 million pounds loss for 800 grand revenue or something like this so
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  it wasn't it was losing a lot of money it did have a uk government grant from
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  the uk space agency yes we do have a space agency
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  and they don't have any rockets but we've got a space agency and they had a
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  £1.5 million grant to look at food production in space and so not sure what's
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  going to happen with that project.
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  And so I'll probably do another episode about food production and hydroponics
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  in space because that's a good interesting topic to discuss.
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  But yeah, it's an interesting developing story. What will happen with all the materials?
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  Who knows? Whether it might be sold and it might be bought by a competitor.
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  They have their own inbuilt software that all the farms are run on.
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  So potentially there's sale of IP. but also
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  there's the added complication if they're not using generic software
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  and generic systems that perhaps it'd be
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  hard for a competitor to buy them so vertical future
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  one of the really big players it's really upsetting from a
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  uk perspective because having been in holland for.
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  The last few weeks and when you go to green tech and
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  things like this i get really jealous of the dutch and even
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  other smaller european countries who
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  have a very thriving corticultural sector and there's
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  no reason the uk shouldn't and failures like
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  this only set us back further and you
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  know the the whole dutch horticulture sector
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  was set up to feed britain with high value
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  vegetables and fruits and flowers after the
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  industrial revolution if you go there and we go to like the westerns
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  museum you'll see that you know they did the horticulture
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  industry wasn't set up for german exports french exports
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  it was set up just for supply in england same with
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  britney and the whole of britney their onions and vegetable
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  production that was all set up for supply in england so we should
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  be able to be self-sufficient we have the land we have
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  the resources we have the technology but for some reason
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  it's just not working out and so this is another failure for uk horticulture
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  in general not just vertical farming so no one should be jumping with joy to
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  see vertical futures up for sale and making massive losses but vertical farming
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  if it goes wrong it tends to go wrong dramatically people do make massive losses um.
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  They're highly leveraged companies because they get investment from the city
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  of London or Wall Street.
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  And as Charlie Munger would say from Berkshire Hathaway, three things that will
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  kill a company or kill a person's business, ladies, liquor, and leverage.
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  And when it comes to leafy greens and things like this, I always say it's very low margin product.
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  So you have to make sure you're profitable and massive scale.
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  So if you've learned anything from Hydroponics Daily,
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  listen to hydroponics daily i always recommend if you're going to start a
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  hydroponics company always start with something very highly
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  profitable that you know there is a market for
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  and is a niche and you can develop your
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  not just that you've got to develop a moat around it
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  so you've got to have an ability to do something really
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  difficult that no one else can do easily so
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  say you found there was a market for you know
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  celery that had three leaves for example then
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  if anyone else could go and do that you're yes it might be highly profitable
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  for the first six months or so but if someone else can come and do it straight
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  away then then your long-term profitability is not going to be good so yeah
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  don't start hydroponic businesses working on leafy veg would be my first.
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  Piece of advice for anyone getting into hydroponics always choose something very
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  very not niche but highly profitable and something
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  you can protect with something there's a real challenge behind
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  its production so things like we talked about peonies in the
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  past talked about hydroponic wine you know something like
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  that something you can really make a big big splash with what else
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  has been going on i would say if you're in the uk
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  always make sure that if you are going to buy a product from utreema here
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  at utreema i'm an engine director founder ceo if
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  you want to say that you can't really say a ceo even got you've got less than
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  10 employees but if you're if you're looking to buy a product one
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  of our specialist hydroponic inputs or lawn inputs or anything like that just
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  email me and i'll make sure that you get a free sample with any product that
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  you purchase and if you're outside the uk and you're looking to if you're looking
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  for interesting products to distribute then we've got a whole portfolio of really interesting.
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  leaf or liquid gold as it's called in the uk salicylic acid
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  concentrates all sorts of really interesting useful
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  products that you might be interested in distributing if you
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  are then please get in touch with us at utreema it's
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  if you're struggling to spell utreema it's just latin for
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  wasabi so have a look for that i'll just
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  google hydroponics daily and we'll come up so i'm going
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  to get back to this wedding now it's a lovely lock it's
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  uh haven't seen nessie yet or any monsters and i'm.
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  Off back to glasgow tonight to stay in a premier inn
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  hotel that i know will be a good quality and
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  won't have vomit on the stairs won't have
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  people random people trying to get into the room at two o'clock in
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  the morning and will be a family room rather
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  than a tiny tiny room so yeah let's get
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  back to normality and better audio quality tomorrow thank
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  you very much for listening and if you found this useful then go
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  podcast charts and i really
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  would be loved to get higher up into the charts and
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  beat some really high well-known gardening podcasts
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  you know horticultural podcasts and spread the word about hydroponics because
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  we want to grow the hydroponics industry and failures like vertical future we
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  don't want to be seeing every day we want to see successes and so if we can
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  get further up the charts we can spread the word about hydroponics thank you
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  very much for listening until tomorrow this has been hydroponics daily goodbye.