Nobody said establishing a pioneering glasshouse project was going to be easy, and that has been borne out with new figures showing Thanet Earth struggling to achieve profitability in its first full year.

Growing salad crops under glass in the UK is a notoriously tricky business, with producers left exposed to volatility in the energy and currency markets, as well as the vagaries of the weather impacting on both light levels and consumer purchases.

Chairman Chris Mack is one of the industry’s visionaries though, and he is realistic enough to know that even an £80 million investment isn’t necessarily going to return a profit immediately. It is a long-term project and he has predicted it will break even this year. Once it does, and the management team build on their experiences so far, a steady increase in profit should follow.

Supermarkets have welcomed the increased level of UK-grown salad crops that Thanet Earth has brought, and last week we reported Asda’s International Produce boss Nick Scrase as saying he saw opportunity for more UK glass.

Mack himself has in the past cast doubt upon whether a project the scale of Thanet Earth can be repeated in the UK - citing the need for such factors as bank support, favourable planning committees and good local infrastructure to all come together - but the industry should welcome any further plans for similar developments.

Increasing UK sourcing is not an easy path, but it is one that can bring long-term rewards.