GrowUp, the UK’s best-selling vertical farm, receives £38 million investment from Generate Capital to produce locally grown, pesticide-free greens

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 17, 2024--

Today, Generate Capital, a leading sustainable infrastructure investment and operating company, and GrowUp, the UK’s best-selling vertical farm, announced a £38 million investment to meet growing demand for GrowUp’s popular ready-to-eat salads.

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Generate Capital’s investment will help expand capacity at GrowUp’s Kent vertical farm, accelerate GrowUp's leadership of the UK salad category, support the Unbeleafable and Fresh Leaf Co. brands, drive R&D at GrowUp’s Leaf Lab site in Cambridge, and increase GrowUp's influence as a certified B Corp.

This funding extends Generate Capital's existing partnership with GrowUp, following an initial financing in 2021 that enabled GrowUp to prove its energy-efficient growing system and start converting a five-acre brownfield site into the equivalent of 1,000 acres of grade 1 farmland in Kent. GrowUp is the first vertical farm to have supplied branded, bagged salads to the country’s largest supermarket chain, Tesco, and to Iceland, SPAR, as well as other major food service customers.

“This investment is a fantastic boost to GrowUp and recognises the team’s passion and talent. We partnered with Generate Capital because, as a $10 billion sustainable infrastructure investor with a mission to ‘rebuild the world together’, Generate Capital aligns with our ethos. With Generate Capital's support, we have proved that vertically farmed salads are sustainable, cost competitive, and commercially viable, as well as tasty, healthy and long lasting. Together we can unlock a new salad category and meet growing consumer demand,” said Marcus Whately, CEO of GrowUp.

“Consumers want UK-grown, sustainable, longer-lasting leaves – grown without pesticides. With this further investment, we can expand production to meet demand and continue to transform UK food production. We've been growing for over 11 years now. We've come a long way with Generate Capital's support, since Kate Hofman and Tom Webster set up their first vertical farm in 2013, supplying salad leaves to London markets and restaurants,” added Whately.

“GrowUp is one of the UK’s most exciting and innovative vertical farming operations, experiencing nearly 800% sales increase year over year. Their ability to quickly earn the trust of the UK’s largest retailers shows the appeal of their product lines, the strength of their team, and their ability to meet rising consumer demand for healthy, locally grown food,” said Generate Capital’s CEO and Co-founder Scott Jacobs. “We look forward to working with them to keep accelerating the decarbonisation of the food system by providing nutritious, affordable and sustainable greens to UK consumers and food manufacturers.”

“Since our first investment in 2021, GrowUp’s unique approach has demonstrated that producing superior, sustainable leafy greens at scale and at competitive pricing is possible, unlocking the potential to capture significant market share in the UK salad market,” added Eduardo Clemente, a Managing Director at Generate Capital. “In less than a year from starting operations at industrial scale, GrowUp’s success in securing significant interest and volumes from some of the UK largest retailers is a testament to their value proposition.”

About GrowUp Farms

GrowUp Farms is a purpose-led, award-winning vertical farming business and certified B Corp. It was founded by Kate Hofman and Tom Webster in 2013 in a small unit in London where they created a controlled environment to grow salad leaves that they supplied to Borough Market and London restaurants.

Fast forward 11 years and over £100 million investment, GrowUp has taken a five-acre brownfield site and has created a vertical farm in Kent growing salad leaves 365 days a year. The farm uses state-of-the-art technology and 100% renewable energy from the co-located bioenergy plant to create the ideal environment for their leaves to thrive, ensuring they receive the optimal balance of water, light and nutrients.

Once the Kent farm is fully operational, the site will produce 1.4 million bags of salad per week. GrowUp was the first vertical farm to introduce a branded salad into a supermarket chain in the UK with the launch of Fresh Leaf Co. in Iceland stores across the country in February of 2023 and SPAR in February 2024. The Unbeleafable range launched in Tesco in July 2023. Both brands feature different collections of leaves that are ready-to-eat, fresher and long lasting.

For more information, please visit growupfarms.co.uk.

About Generate Capital

Generate Capital is a leading sustainable investment and operating platform driving the infrastructure transition. Generate aims to provide the capital and help that developers, businesses, cities and communities need to accelerate cost savings, resilience and decarbonization. Since 2014, Generate has invested in and operated sustainable assets across six sectors: power, mobility, waste, green digital, water and agriculture, and industrial decarbonization. With more than $10 billion raised since inception, 50+ technology and development partnerships and more than 2,000 assets globally, Generate’s one-stop-shop offers proof, not promises that sustainability pays. For more information, please visit www.generatecapital.com.

Unbeleafable zesty baby leaves are the latest ready-to-eat bagged salad from GrowUp, which launched in Tesco stores in May. This is the only bagged salad available in the UK that provides the unique mix of sorrel leaves and green and red baby lettuce leaves, which have been grown in GrowUp's vertical farm in Kent. (Photo: Business Wire)

WASHINGTON (AP) — An inflation measure closely tracked by the Federal Reserve remained low last month, extending a trend of cooling price increases that clears the way for the Fed to start cutting its key interest rate next month for the first time in 4 1/2 years.

Prices rose just 0.2% from June to July, the Commerce Department said Friday, up a tick from the previous month’s 0.1% increase. Compared with a year earlier, inflation was unchanged at 2.5%.

The slowdown in inflation could upend former President Donald Trump's efforts to saddle Vice President Kamala Harris with blame for rising prices. Still, despite the near-end of high inflation, many Americans remain unhappy with today's sharply higher average prices for such necessities as gas, food and housing compared with their pre-pandemic levels.

Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core inflation rose 0.2% from June to July, the same as in the previous month. Measured from a year earlier, core prices increased 2.6%, also unchanged from the previous year. Economists closely watch core prices, which typically provide a better read of future inflation trends.

Friday's figures underscore that inflation is steadily fading in the United States after three painful years of surging prices hammered many families' finances. According to the measure reported Friday, inflation peaked at 7.1% in June 2022, the highest in four decades.

The Fed tends to favor the inflation gauge that the government issued Friday — the personal consumption expenditures price index — over the better-known consumer price index. The PCE index tries to account for changes in how people shop when inflation jumps. It can capture, for example, when consumers switch from pricier national brands to cheaper store brands.

In general, the PCE index tends to show a lower inflation rate than CPI. In part, that’s because rents, which have been high, carry double the weight in the CPI that they do in the index released Friday.

In a high-profile speech last week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell attributed the inflation surge that erupted in 2021 to a “collision” of reduced supply stemming from the pandemic’s disruptions with a jump in demand as consumers ramped up spending, drawing on savings juiced by federal stimulus checks.

With price increases now cooling, Powell also said last week that “the time has come” to begin lowering the Fed’s key interest rate. Economists expect a cut of at least a quarter-point cut in the rate, now at 5.3%, at the Fed’s next meeting Sept. 17-18. With inflation coming under control, Powell indicated that the central bank is now increasingly focused on preventing any worsening of the job market. The unemployment rate has risen for four straight months.

Reductions in the Fed’s benchmark interest rate should, over time, reduce borrowing costs for a range of consumer and business loans, including mortgages, auto loans and credit cards.

Consumers are still willing to boost their spending, fueling steady growth in the economy. On Thursday, the government revised its estimate of growth in the April-June quarter to a healthy annual rate of 3%, up from 2.8%.

Shoppers consider items displayed in refrigerators at a Costco warehouse Aug. 22, 2024, in Parker, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

FILE - People shop at a Walmart Superstore in Secaucus, New Jersey, July 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)