This B-Crop is making sustainability a priority for chefs

Added on 16 August 2022

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This B-Crop is making sustainability a priority for chefs

Harvest London, a vertical farm growing herbs and leafy greens in London, has expanded their operations beyond the pilot stage into their very first full-scale operation. In the last few years, Brexit, and now the coronavirus have shown how reliant England is on other countries for their produce. Chris Davies, the CEO and Founder of Harvest London explains, "when we first started Harvest London there was very little interest in controlled environment agriculture, but now we're definitely seeing a huge uptick in the business and interest in the industry as a whole. England needs a food policy that will develop over time, and inspire people to get into food and local food systems."

Harvest Londonstarted off as a small proof of concept started off as a small proof of concept farm 2.5 years ago, and since then has scaled very quickly.

Davies explains the journey has been about fundraising, "Our platform Farm Force allows us to manage our capacity, understanding what the capacity is and enabling us to say that we've been operating at full capacity. Operating at 100% capacity for most of 2018 gave us the impetus to begin approaching angel investors and to do a crowdfunding round at the tail end of 2019, through which we raised Ł400,000."

In 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, Harvest London raised another Ł500,000 from angel investors and the UK Government's Future Fund, matching their initial investment, and raising nearly a million pounds. "We spent the first Ł400,000, our own money, to build the farm rather than going down the leasing route or financing route. The second Ł500,000 gave us a stronger footing to approach a proper series of funding." According to Davies, the farm plans to produce about 5 tons of basil each year, and those sales are secure for the next three years.

"We've signed a long term contract with one of our primary customers to essentially buy all that we produce for the next three years," he says. The security of this type of contract has allowed Harvest London to build this full-scale farm. Building off this momentum, Harvest London plans to do another round of funding in order to build more farms and expand their operation across the UK.