Award-winning vertical and indoor farming technology company, LettUs Grow, has announced today that it has secured £2.35 million in seed funding. The investment round was led by Longwall Venture Partners LLP. The round also included follow-on investment from the University of Bristol Enterprise Fund (managed by Parkwalk), Bethnal Green Ventures and ClearlySo.
The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report states explicitly that climate change is threatening global food security with severe potential risks for traditional methods of food production. The report is clear that the level of risk will depend on how production, technological development and land management evolve. LettUs Grow was founded to mitigate these risks posed to agriculture and to lessen the environmental impacts of growing fresh produce.
LettUs Grow have designed a patent-pending indoor farming system for greenhouse and vertical farms to address global food security and sustainability concerns. These indoor farms need no fertile land to operate, use zero pesticides and provide a consistent, predictable and climate-resilient food supply all year round. LettUs Grow’s offering is centred around two core products: a novel aeroponic system and an integrated farm management software called Ostara. With their unique approach to aeroponics, LettUs Grow have shown growth rate increases of over 70% across a range of crops, compared to current vertical farming methods such as hydroponics. Ostara automates and controls the whole indoor farm, whilst collecting data on plants, overseeing inputs to crop growth and allowing farmers to trace crops from seed to sale, making operations more efficient.
Having built one of the world’s most advanced indoor aeroponic growing facilities in 2019 and with a growing pipeline of sales with key clients, LettUs Grow are well-positioned to become a global leader in the indoor farming technology supply chain. The investment will allow them to build their second state-of-the-art aeroponic research centre, scale their existing technology, deliver on their growing sales pipeline and accelerate new product lines to market.
Charlie Guy, co-founder and Managing Director of LettUs Grow: “This investment gives us a platform to really accelerate in 2020 and scale-up the delivery of our game-changing technology to farmers across the country. We’re seeing rising demand from around the world for new technologies to help farmers grow crops in ways that mitigate against the effects of climate change and ever-increasing extreme weather events.”
Rebecca Todd, Investment Director at Longwall Ventures, an early-stage technology investor: “Food security is an emerging major international challenge, especially in this era of unpredictable climate that we are now entering. We at Longwall are excited to be backing LettUs Grow in the development of game-changing technology that has the potential to make a real difference by making food growing more efficient, predictable, controllable and local.”
