A first on British soil, Thanet Earth will ultimately provide 51 hectares of glasshouses on its 95ha Isle of Thanet site, with innovation and techniques borrowed and improved on from the Dutch - including combined heat and power (CHP) systems that will make the facility virtually carbon neutral.
With the £50 million project halfway through its build and producing 100 tonnes of English peppers, well over 500,000 cucumbers and 150t of tomatoes a week, this seems to be only the beginning of a significant increase in home-grown salad production and a new dawn for the UK salad industry.
Thanet Earth thrives on efficiency and everything that can be done to make the project more economical, environment-friendly and productive has been done - despite the fact that the site is still under construction.
All produce grown on site is packed and marketed by Thanet Earth Marketing - a joint venture between Thanet Earth, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fresca and three growers: Dutch companies Rainbow Growers’ Group, Red Star Trading and A&A - in a purpose-built facility 400 yards from the glasshouses. Efficient and neat, Thanet Earth Marketing has lorries to collect the peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes to bring them to one room where they are packed in separate areas.
The three partner growers planted the first crops by December, before the packhouse and offices opened in March, when the first harvests came on line. The companies’ glasshouses take up half the site so far, with A&A - two independent Dutch growers who have come together to make this business their main endeavour - producing cucumbers on an 8ha site; Rainbow Growers’ Group growing red, yellow and orange peppers on 9ha; and Red Star Trading growing tomatoes on 10ha.
When Fresca bought cauliflower grower Robert Montgomery Ltd’s land, there was a vision for Thanet Earth and that included glasshouses that would generate their own heat on site, as well as supply energy for the National Grid, to enable independence from high oil prices. Known as CHP, this concept is not new and has been widely used in the Netherlands and to a smaller extent in the UK.
“Through the heat generator, we sell energy made through making heat for our glasshouses back to the National Grid,” says Steve McVickers, managing director of Thanet Earth Marketing. “The growers own both sources, which gives them freedom from raising oil prices and an extra revenue stream. You buy gas to produce heat for the glasshouses and the by-product is electricity. The sale of power and the cost of fuel are closely connected, so money will always be made. The price of oil has been down for a while, but it is now on its way up again and, without CHP, half of the total cost of input is on fuel.”
But for this to happen in the UK, a huge amount of infrastructure had to be put in place and an arrangement made with the National Grid.
“In the Netherlands, most glasshouse growers use CHP because the country’s National Grid works in a different way,” explains McVickers. “In the Netherlands, the grid is supposed to be fed by lots of small energy generators from a wide geographical range, but in the UK our grid is supposed to source energy from two or three huge power stations. We need one that works both ways, so we have invested a lot of money into restructuring a pylon and we now have the National Grid coming along the side of the site. We had to build a sub-station and now we can transfer the power to the National Grid.”
McVickers believes that the Thanet Earth model has to be the future of production in the UK for the industry to be sustainable. “Several growers have got CHP in the UK, but what is important is how much power is generated,” he says. “They are generally 50:50 models, where you produce 50 per cent of the heat you need. We do not believe that this is enough. The Dutch horticultural industry provides 25 per cent of the country’s energy supply - it has made itself very important. The UK will develop over time, though.”
In a further stride to be self-sufficient, Thanet Earth has created water reservoirs to provide growers with enough water throughout the year. Although glasshouses use water efficiently, they need a lot of it. Unable to guarantee complete availability of water throughout the year, Thanet Earth made seven reservoirs, which will each hold enough water for its corresponding glasshouses and collectively hold 70m gallons of water.
All growers use a gutter system within their glasshouses, which enables them to re-use the excess water, which ensures efficient use of fertilisers. This means that 20 per cent of each day’s water requirements come from recycled water from the previous day, helping ensure that the ratio of fertilisers to product is extremely low.
Using Dutch models of production in the UK has made the produce grown more carbon efficient than salads imported from the Netherlands, due to Thanet Earth being closer to market.
Thanet Earth Marketing commissioned a third-party investigation into the carbon footprint of the site’s produce and the results of this were released at the end of last year. Thanet Earth now has the PAS 2050 standard, which is backed by The Carbon Trust, and can prove that all of its cucumber, pepper and summer tomato production are virtually carbon neutral, while the carbon footprint of its 52-week production of tomatoes is comparable to traditional tomato production.
McVickers maintains that collaboration is the key to such projects as Thanet Earth and that the model would not be cost effective for just one grower. “All this would not be viable for just one glasshouse,” he explains. “To do it as a collection of glasshouses works because the costs are shared. Planning permission has to be obtained and there is the expense of the infrastructure work. We believe that we have the local community and the council’s support for further expansion, which is an advantage.”
The addition of Thanet Earth has meant a substantial increase to the UK’s production of salad products, but McVickers is quick to point out that when you consider the amount of salad product consumed in the UK, it is not so impressive. He says that the industry has a long way to go.
“We will not have a direct effect on current UK growers because of the size of the UK horticultural industry versus consumption,” states McVickers. “This is the reason why we have room for Thanet Earth and a few more projects like it.
“But I hope it will lift the salad industry’s profile, as there has been a huge media influence. Any information we can pass on to the public on the UK industry, on our growing techniques or on increasing production has got to be a good thing. The public is genuinely intrigued by this project, which gives us a good platform to promote the industry.
“It has been quite a silent industry in the past. In recent years, groups like the British Tomato Growers’ Association have made an effort, but mostly the industry has failed to capture the public’s imagination. The public thinks that this project is really ground-breaking, but the supermarkets have been selling products grown like this for more than 10 years. We have to be honest and say we that have not kept the public up to date on how product is grown. Thanet Earth has the opportunity and responsibility to communicate a message and make sure consumers understand.
“Thanet Earth has come at a time when the cost of products is high for consumers and, at the same time, there is interest in the UK being self-sufficient. I think that the industry will be more affected by what happens next, rather than by Thanet Earth itself.”
So what does McVickers make of the “Frankenstein food” label that the project received from the likes of the Daily Mail? “We have been frustrated by some incredibly misleading and factually incorrect reporting in such papers,” he tells FPJ, “but most of the public knows that these papers like to take the negative stance.
“But as an industry and from the point of view of Thanet Earth, we cannot walk away from the media because one journalist may write a bad story. We genuinely believe we have a positive story to tell. It is just another challenge we face to make sure that consumers understand the process we go through. We have some loyal supporters in the media; The One Show is coming to film a piece [on Tuesday] and both local and national newspapers have written some great articles on us.”
Of course, from a trade point of view, inside Thanet Earth it is much the same as one of the many glasshouses you would find in the Netherlands - if not better.
The Rainbow Growers’ Group’s operation manager at the Thanet Earth site, Tom Zwinkers, believes that the company’s glasshouse is better situated in the UK than in the Netherlands and says that the pepper season, which started in March, has been very good. Its CHP system also has the capacity to provide 2,500 homes with electricity. “We have more light here,” says Zwinkers. “I will be able to say better at the end of the season, but so far it is a big advantage to have a glasshouse here. It is bigger, the roof is higher and the climate is more suited to growing peppers. We are also near the sea, which makes the air very humid, and there are two things peppers need the most when they are growing; heat and humidity. We have a target of producing 25-28kg this season - but targets are made to be exceeded.”
A&A, formed by Arjan de Gier and Addy Breugen, saw cucumbers harvested as early as February this year. “The conditions are very good here,” says de Gier. “It is mostly similar to the Netherlands, but water is not a problem here. We have coasts on three sides and a good climate for growing cucumbers - it is not as hot in the summer and not as cold in the winter as the Netherlands.”
Thanet Earth has scope to expand further still after all seven glasshouses have been completed, with infrastructure in place for growers to join and connect to supply the National Grid. The packhouse was also built with further expansion in mind and has a capacity that exceeds its current usage.
McVickers believes that it is Thanet Earth’s attitude and approach to business that sets it apart and will ensure its long-term sustainability.
“Over the last 15 years, Dutch technology has excelled and the UK has not invested much in glasshouses, but we are now at a crossroads. What is the future of the UK industry?” asks McVickers.
“The grower has to be involved in the supply chain to the customer, otherwise companies make decisions on their own needs and motivation. This needs to go straight through to the end consumer as well; we cannot pass product through one company to the next because it transfers the responsibility and each time something is lost of the focus on the consumer. At Thanet Earth, everyone is a specialist in their own field, but also a specialist in the route to market.”
McVickers believes that the best is yet to come from the UK salad industry and says that Thanet Earth is just the beginning.
“This project is not so much a salad revolution, but an evolution,” he says. “The industry will continue to evolve; Thanet Earth is just a chapter. The whole industry must now take on the challenge to find a sustainable future.”
HAZELDENE POWERS AHEAD
Salad grower and processor Hazeldene is conducting field trials to increase its production in the UK.
The initiative offers the opportunity to look at lines and try different leaves, so the company can then grow something to suit the specific needs of customers. If consumers select a product and it is ready to be commercialised, Hazeldene will establish a programme, with the potential for it to identify a variety that can be made exclusively for customers.
“We are currently carrying out extensive variety trials in Lancashire that include around 110 different varieties,” says Simon Ball, managing director of Hazeldene. “A key part of this is around our theme, Putting Flavour back on the Plate, but we are also very keen to look at varieties that lend themselves to machine harvesting. Labour is obviously a large contributor to the cost of the raw material and is becoming more difficult to secure, so the ability to machine harvest would be advantageous and I am sure we will see more of this in the future.
“In July, we will be inviting customers from convenience retail and food manufacturing, plus development chefs from the foodservice sector, to visit our variety trials.
“At Hazeldene, we are focused on excelling in the marketplace by offering more dynamic and innovative products that inspire and capture the imagination, with the ability to be tailored to customers’ needs,” he adds.
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