£14 million contract win for Derby tech firm Light Science Technologies

Added by Love Business East Midlands | 12 November 2021

UPDATED: 16 November 2021

Light Science Technologies and Zenith Nurseries to develop first retrofittable, all-in-one semi-automated lighting and sensor solution

New cloche product will extend harvest window and increase yields for indoor growers.

AgriTech firm Light Science Technologies Ltd (LST) has announced the start of a project to develop a cloche lighting and sensor technology system for the controlled environmental agriculture (CEA) market, reducing the need for import substitution by extending the harvest window and provide a possible solution to labour shortages for growers.

The contracted project, potentially worth up to £13.84 million* is with UK grower Zenith Nurseries Ltd and Morrish Engineering Ltd, and will focus on development of the new cloche product, which will be the first retrofittable, semi-automated, all-in-one lighting and sensor solution, providing year-round harvests for growers across multiple plant varieties in vertical farming, polytunnel and glasshouse environments.

Furthermore, the solution is intended to extend the use of LST’s award-winning nurturGROW sensor to new market applications, such as agriculture fields.

With an initial potential UK market of 4,000 industrial growers, producing over 300 types of field-scale and protected vegetable and salad crops, and tree and berry fruits, the solution will aim to improve productivity by increasing yields.

Simon Deacon, CEO of Light Science Technologies, commented:

“The development of the LED grow lighting cloche solution is an exciting progression in our product portfolio. We are in the midst of an extremely buoyant period of growth for LST, having last month floated on the London Stock Exchange. We have a growing number of routes to increased commercialisation and believe that we are well placed to scale up rapidly.”

Tony Newell-Griffiths of Zenith Nurseries said:

“Land is becoming ever scarcer so for each square metre of land we need to have as much product as possible. The project we’re developing with LST is about maximising the usage of our polytunnels and greenhouses to enable increased crop yield.

"LST are providing us with a full end-to-end service right from the consultation through to research and design, then right through to manufacturing and testing. The reason we chose to work with them was purely based on a deep sense of trust in their capabilities and as a result, we were very keen to get involved with the project.”

There are strong prospects for the indoor farming technologies market over the next four years, as the CEA market is poised to grow by $624.28 million during 2021-2025, progressing at a CAGR of almost 9% during the forecast period, with reduction in pollution and deforestation said to be driving growth.

*Source: subject to specific milestones and conditions as more fully described in LST’s flotation announcement on 15 October 2021

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