About Us

Back in 2005 we had an idea. We wanted to do something that would help reverse a worrying decline in the amount of protected salad vegetables grown in the UK. The large-scale growers in Holland and Spain had been taking a bigger share of the UK market, with growers here finding it harder than ever to compete.

Energy prices had been rising at a much faster rate than the price of food. A production greenhouse in the UK has to be heated but it began to cost more to heat a greenhouse than the income it could generate from the sale of its crops. The industry had to find efficiencies and to look to the production models of European growers to stay in business and compete.

This would take a lot of investment and it would be a bold move to build a completely new business. We did the research and found the right partners – experts in growing and selling to the supermarkets. The challenge was to take Thanet Earth from paper plan to full production as quickly as possible.