The glasshouse in Holsworthy Devon County is a two hectare Venlo structure, that will be built by the Dutch greenhouse builder JARO Glasshouse Projects. Besides this greenhouse, the Matthews Flower Group has plans for a second 2 hectare cut flower greenhouse in Bury St Edmonds in Suffolk.
According to Ian Matthews, the greenhouse will be the first to produce hydroponic roses in the UK on such a large scale. "Despite the rose being England's National Flower, there are no growers of cut roses anymore in the UK. Nobody in Britain is growing them under glass, so we will be the only one on the market."
According to Matthews, there is a incredible demand for British roses in the UK Supermarket. "Retailers are asking for them, because the UK consumers are willing to pay good money for them. Because of the demand, we already decided to built the second greenhouse, before we started the construction of the first one. We know that there is a market for English flowers, we already have people chasing us for orders now."
Despite the fact that the Dutch cut flower growers are dealing with difficult times due to high cost prices and fierce competition coming from East Africa and South America, Matthews assures that the new greenhouse will be very competitive. "Thanks to the collaboration with Andigestion Ltd, a company that is generating 80MW of renewable electricity per day from food waste, which is exported into the local grid. Andigestion will install heat recovery equipment to their generators, as well as drying equipment to produce woodchip which will be burnt in order to satisfy the seasonal heat requirements of flower production. This will deliver more than enough energy to the Devon glasshouse."
The greenhouse in Suffolk will be equipped with sustainable energy from an Anaerobic digester of Simmonds farms in Bury St Edmonds.
The projects are financed by both banks and investors.
