F
arming tech agency Vertical Future is in the midst of elevating £60 million in a recent funding spherical, the Standard can reveal.
The London-based enterprise is looking for to increase operations because it eyes partnerships with main supermarkets to develop big UK-based vertical farms.
It comes at a troublesome time for the vertical farming sector that has seen a string of collapses as companies struggled to boost the money to gas operations. In June, US-based AeroFarms entered administration, whereas French agency Agricool went into receivership earlier within the 12 months.
But Vertical Future CEO Jamie Burrows insisted his enterprise was not headed in the identical route.
“A lot of the bigger [vertical farming] companies that raised ridiculous sums of money were going to encounter difficulties because they didn’t really have the right approach to technology…they tried to scale too quickly with the wrong tech,” he advised the Standard.
“[But] It’s a really interesting time for us, with some really big projects. We’re in very good cash position, we’re a very different business and we manufacture most of our own systems.”
The firm started operations in 2016 with the development of a small vertical farm in Deptford, South London to develop ‘minicrops’ comparable to herbs. It has since expanded to develop its personal {hardware} and software program options.
The agency final accomplished a £21 million Series A funding spherical in early 2022, the most important of its type for a vertical farming enterprise, which valued it at £100 million.
“We decided we wanted to focus more on the technology because most of the technology in the sector had come from Dutch glasshouses,” Burrows stated.
“The technologies were OK…but we realised that the systems were really inefficient, you couldn’t reach economies of scale, the capex per square metre was too high, and there was no real supplier out there that was providing an integrated solution.
“We’ve built eight farms in the UK…people come to us, we do the designing and we go and build the farms.”
A Vertical Future spokesperson stated the quantity raised may differ from the steered £60 million when the funding spherical is finally closed.
