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The state of the UK Hydroponic Industry: A Post-COVID Revival · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:06
  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Utrema Limited.
• 0:10
  We make gold leaf, as it's called in the US, or liquid gold,
• 0:14
  as it's called in the UK, plus loads of other hydroponic and horticultural inputs, specialist inputs.
• 0:21
  Today, I thought I'd go through a graph I created on Google Sheets.
• 0:25
  Yes it sounds boring but it's about hydroponics and
• 0:28
  it really gives a summary of the state of
• 0:31
  or a snapshot should we say of the state of
• 0:34
  the hydroponic industry in the uk and i've
• 0:38
  plotted the number of hydroponic companies formed
• 0:42
  in each year and the number that have been dissolved the number
• 0:45
  of gone bankrupt or gone into an administration or whatever you want
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  to say stop trading basically and it's
• 0:51
  really interesting because it obviously
• 0:55
  during lockdown and covid loads of
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  companies were formed but and far more
• 1:01
  than any other year in 2020 but and obviously
• 1:04
  less companies were dissolved but not as
• 1:07
  many as you would expect considering the bump that
• 1:10
  hydroponics had that really big bump um in trading
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  in 2020 and so that means that the people that
• 1:17
  were there trading had a really good year and it.
• 1:19
  Wasn't just shared out people were slow to catch on
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  and then there were there was an increase in companies
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  stopping trading going dissolved thereafter and
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  far more companies were being dissolved than were
• 1:33
  being created up until this year
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  2025 where we're starting to see more companies
• 1:39
  being formed in hydroponics than are disappearing which is
• 1:42
  great news and we haven't seen a
• 1:45
  year like that since 2020 and then before covid
• 1:48
  2018 so it's not all great news in hydroponics and if you look at google trends
• 1:55
  you'll see there is a downward trend in the term hydroponics compared to other
• 2:01
  things generic things in like propagation units or vegetable seeds if you plot
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  those two things together on Google Trends,
• 2:08
  you'll see hydroponics is still declining.
• 2:12
  And if you plot it against toilet brushes, you'll see toilet brushes have increased,
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  which is, I always use toilet brushes because it's a good way of seeing a generic,
• 2:21
  you know, standard, non-fancy product.
• 2:24
  And you can see sort of like the trend for retail products with toilet brushes.
• 2:29
  And you can see that hydroponics is going down and standard,
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  normal goods are going up.
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  But perhaps, you know, people are spending more and this is why it's not so
• 2:39
  much small players now, it's larger companies.
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  And so you can see that the company data is showing that it's a lot healthier.
• 2:47
  The actual businesses that are forming hydroponics is a lot better.
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  So this is not just growth shops. This is not just hydroponic companies.
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  This is any company with the word hydroponic or hydroponics in their name.
• 3:01
  I've not gone into the detail and studied what they're actually doing.
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  And then there will be other companies that are in hydroponics that have not
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  got the word hydroponics in the name.
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  And so don't come up on the company's house data so
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  in the uk we're very lucky we have this thing called company's house
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  and we can look at other people's data
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  and their accounts and things like this in sundays
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  accounts some reason things like this in many countries you can't have this things
• 3:25
  i think in new zealand and australia you can do that because they're
• 3:28
  former colonies whereas in the us i don't think you get in detail
• 3:31
  on company's accounts as you as we do in the uk
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  every company has to submit it to company's house and you
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  can search them and when i'm bored i tend to search from
• 3:39
  my competitors and see how much cash they had in the bank in
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  2015 and things like this boring things
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  like this so yeah i think this data
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  is good news for the hydroponic sector in the uk i don't know maybe you've got
• 3:53
  a similar information in your country and you you can make a similar graph and
• 3:58
  let me know what you think that's been hydroponics daily for today nothing about
• 4:01
  science or growing it's more about the state of the industry and where we think it's heading and i
• 4:06
  it's heading in a positive direction by the look of this a maturing market that's
• 4:10
  coming out of a slump that was partly self-inflicted after covid so thank you
• 4:16
  very much for listening and if you like this please share it with any other
• 4:18
  hydroponic growers or anyone else in the industry thank you very much goodbye.