Intensive food production around the world is creating huge environmental risks (pollution from chemicals, soil degradation from intensive farming and carbon emissions from importation). Vertical farming provides us with a sustainable solution.

Vertical farming is the practice of growing food without soil. This is often done in vertically stacked layers or "vertical planes". Often, the system is used within a controlled environment (temperature, humidity etc.) which is optimised for plant growth. Vertical farming produces food on a smaller footprint, offers reliable year-round production with no chemicals or pesticides and saves up to 90% water compared to traditional farming. On top of this, it's not dependent on arable land and can bring food production close to consumers, saving on international transport costs. It also helps expand the agricultural industry in the UK.

To grow produce without soil in vertical farming, we use 'growing substrates' to plant seeds in these systems. Rockwool (the same material as home insulation) and plastic sponge, are popular. However, the majority of these substrates are single-use only. Although vertical farming promises to produce sustainable food, non-reusable substrates currently lead to tonnes of waste every harvest (depending on farm size). For every plant grown in a vertical farming system, a cube of substrate is thrown away. Moreover, the production, transportation, labour and disposal processes associated with these substrates are not environmentally friendly. Although there are some biodegradable alternatives - they are expensive, single-use and come with their own environmental downfalls. This issue is currently overlooked and needs to be addressed as vertical farming continues to expand.

GyroPlant has tackled this issue from a different perspective by developing a novel reusable cup to replace single-use substrates. This is a new approach which helps simplify vertical farming systems and makes them far more sustainable.

This project has two strands. Firstly, industrial R&D will develop the product ready for market entry, selling to semi-automated farms. Secondly, we will work with our vertical farm partner, who produce fully automated vertical farming tech, and integrate a new version of our product into their system.

Our project's objective is to make vertical farming easier, cheaper and more sustainable.