‘Make Salad not War’ with Ben Crowther from LettUs Grow
19th October 2021
In the second talk of our Engineering Design talk series, we were joined by Ben Crowther from LettUs Grow, an Engineering Design alumni start-up. Founded in Bristol in 2015 by Charlie Guy, Ben Crowther and Jack Farmer, LettUs Grow is an indoor farming technology company. They develop greenhouses and vertical farms, specializing in advanced aeroponics. They also design farm management software (Ostara platform) and do advanced research into controlled environment agriculture.
The title of this talk, “Make Salad Not War”, is a reference to his previous job at the defence company Babcock, where in his leaving letter to the company he used this phrase, provoking the ire of some in the company.
Ben started on Engineering Design at Bristol in 2011 and followed the mechanical stream, leading him to a placement at defence company Babcock in his third year. He and his co-founders started working on the foundations of LettUs Grow during their 5th year, when he was completing his project on medical devices. After graduating he worked at Babcock for a year while trying to get LettUs Grow off the ground, before going full time at LettUs Grow after receiving an initial grant.
An initial £80,000 grant allowed the founders to leave their jobs and pay themselves to work full-time on LettUs Grow. After the first sale of their software and hardware package, they were able to secure £250,000 of additional investment from private investors allowing them to develop their products into more polished offerings. Since the initial founding of the company they have received over £4 million in private investments, which have allowed them to expand their staff to 35 in 2021.
Indoor farming has benefits such as lower water use, year-round crop production, reduced fertilizer use and pollution, no pesticides and less transport required for the final produce
“Our mission is to reduce the waste and carbon footprint of fresh produce by empowering anyone, anywhere, to grow delicious food near its point of consumption”
“Roughly 60 million meals worth of food is wasted every year in the UK”
Aeroponics simulates ideal conditions for crop growth by increasing root zone aeration. Nutrients and water are applied directly to the roots through misting which can be done manually or automatically. Plants grow between 20-30% faster in aeroponic systems than in hydroponic systems, making aeroponics more efficient for out of season growing.
LettUs Grow’s Ostara platform is an advanced software platform which is used to improve efficiency of vertical farms and greenhouses through automatic management. They have 8 sites currently under active management with the platform and commercial trials underway with key partners.
The company sells their aeroponic technology in the form of fully equipped shipping containers; the containers are all pre-used for sustainability purposes. As part of their future expansion plans by 2023 they intend to be selling around 25 of these modules every year. Alongside this goal in the same timeframe, they are looking to open a new, larger R&D centre, expand into automated vertical farms, greenhouses, and be able to grow tomatoes. By 2025 the intention is to be developing large scale vertical and greenhouse farms across the globe.
The company is still very supportive of the Engineering Design course, taking on placement students for years in industry, including our EngDes society President Madelaine Silberberg who finished her year in industry at LettUs Grow recently, but is still involved with the company.
