Up to the Challenge: Meet our Business Sustainability Challenge Winners
- Growing Kent & Medway
- Oct 22, 2023
- 5 min read
In spring 2023, we launched our first Business Sustainability Challenge. Seven projects were awarded a share of over £262,000 for their innovative ideas to make the food system more sustainable.
Project ideas had to support sustainable production, products, or packaging in horticulture or the plant-based food and drink sector. Our judging panel was particularly interested in collaborative projects that could create circular economies in the Kent and Medway region. Funding of up to £50,000 was available for successful bids.
Lead Organisation | Project | Grant award |
Re-purposing fruit and vegetable powders | £23,000 | |
Boosting water efficiencies of high-care controlled environment horticulture | £30,000 | |
From whiskey to mushrooms | £14,000 | |
Sustainable CO₂ natural liquid hop extracts with high-impact ester profiles | £50,000 | |
Transforming crop waste into bio-fillers | £50,000 | |
A novel method of seed delivery for vertical farming | £48,000 | |
Managing energy use in apple cold storage | £50,000 |
Re-purposing Fruit and Vegetable Powders
Nim’s Naturally make natural plant-based crisps, teas, garnishes, and botanicals using innovative air-drying techniques. They sell their products to restaurants, hotels, as well as high-street retailers.
Having achieved their goal of zero food waste at their Sittingbourne production facility, they now want to help consumers reduce their own food waste. They are using their grant to develop new products that are innovative, affordable, convenient, and nutritious. The products will be made from rescued fresh fruit and vegetables. Their exclusive method of air-drying will enhance the flavour of the product while retaining most of the nutritional content of the original fresh product.
Lead partner: Nim's Fruit Ltd
Grant award: £23,000
Turning Surplus Fruit into Profit
How Nim's Naturally are creating sustainable food powders from by-products.
Boosting Water Efficiencies of High-care Controlled Environment Horticulture
GrowUp Farms is passionate about creating a more sustainable food system. At their vertical farm in Sandwich, Kent, they produce longer-lasting leafy greens with a low environmental footprint. Their ‘Unbeleafable’ and ‘Fresh Leaf Co’ salad brands are sold in large UK supermarkets.
GrowUp is committed to using fewer resources to produce more food. They are particularly focused on how much water they use. This project will investigate how they can improve their water efficiency, using next-generation British technology. It will focus on recovering and reusing their wastewater to see if they can take better advantage of using rainwater collected from their roof.
Related BBC news: Salad grower trials new water-saving technology
Lead partner: GrowUp Farms
Grant award: £30,000
From whiskey to mushrooms
Canterbury Brewers & Distillers at The Foundry produce beers and spirits within the historic walls of Canterbury in Kent. The enterprise includes The Foundry, a BrewPub on-site, and they offer tours and tasting days.
They have recently designed and built a system that captures the waste heat from their distillation process to heat their restaurant and bar area. With a planned move to another facility to expand their whiskey production, the team wanted to find an innovative use for the waste that will be created in the distillation process. Their grant trialled the production of speciality mushrooms, using the waste grain, water, C0₂, and energy generated by the whiskey production. This will create a new revenue stream.
Lead organisation: Canterbury Brewers & Distillers
Grant award: £14,000
Growing Mushrooms from Whiskey
Turning by-products from whiskey distillation into gourmet mushrooms.
Sustainable CO₂ natural liquid hop extracts with high-impact ester profiles
Totally Natural Solutions produce liquid hop extracts, for major brewers and microbreweries. Their hop oil product is an alternative to dry hop pellets and cones, used in the brewing process.
Their grant project aimed to develop new, more sustainable hop products that will help brewers to create no- and low- alcohol beers with improved sensory characteristics.
Their innovative patented green-technology process keeps the quality of aroma and flavour from hop cones, without using chemical solvents or additives. The grant will be used to develop the technology to make the production methods of hop-based botanical extracts more sustainable. They are aiming to reduce the amount of water and carbon used in the process. As well as find new uses for waste products created in the process that can also be used in drink production.
Lead organisation: Totally Natural Solutions Ltd.
Grant award: £50,000
Application of Agri-Residues as Bio-fillers for Fresh Produce Packaging
Tensei specialises in natural fibres to produce innovative materials, using bio- and agricultural waste. They focus on the use of ‘Second Harvest’, any agri-residues that are left over from primary food crop harvests.
Traditionally, these residues have provided very low-income revenue streams or have even had no use at all. At Tensei, they incorporate ‘Second Harvest’ into injection-moulded polymers to reduce the need for virgin and recycled plastics. This could create a new revenue stream for growers and farmers.
Their grant project trialled new locally sourced agri-waste products. The aim is to find the right blends for polymer compounds to replace plastic and improve the mechanical properties of the final product.
Lead organisation: Tensei
Grant award: £50,000
Transforming Crop Waste
Reducing plastic use by creating sustainable bio-fillers from agricultural by-products.
A Novel Method of Seed Delivery for Vertical Farming
Evogro make personal vertical farms for hospitality operators and homes. They use the same technologies as industrial vertical farms, but scaled down to appliance size. Based in East Malling, Kent, the business provides an integrated system and support service so their customers can grow high-quality crops without needing horticultural expertise.
The goal of this project was to develop a novel method of seed delivery suitable to produce microgreens, salad leaves and herbs in vertical farms.
Lead organisation: Evogro
Grant award: £48,000
Managing Energy Use in Apple Cold Storage
AC Hulme is a mixed-farm based in Canterbury. As well as beef cattle, they grow cereals, potatoes, asparagus and tree fruit, including apples. They also import fruit to offer customers a year-round supply.
Growing apples is a resource-intensive operation that needs lots of energy to cultivate, harvest and store fruit to provide a near year-round supply of British apples.
This project explored ways to improve the energy efficiency of the apple cold stores, without compromising the quality of the fruit. It adjusted the temperatures of refrigeration processes to reduce peaks in use and synchronise energy use with when on-site renewables are available. It will also help to use electricity when it is cheaper.
Several partners contributed to this project. GridDuck provided sensors to measure energy use and temperatures. Stemy Energy provided artificial intelligence and electronic devices to improve energy efficiency and balancing the electricity grid.
The Produce Quality Centre tested the impact of changing air temperature in the stores on the fruit quality. Growers will also be consulted on their interest in new technology for cold storage through British Apples and Pears.
Lead organisation: AC Hulme
Grant award: £50,000
Energy Efficiency in Apple Stores
Collaboration between technology specialists and industry is helping to cut electricity use in fruit storage.
