Greenhouse gain

Industry/horticulture partnership puts waste steam and CO2 to use

Carbon dioxide emissions are being turned into a food miles solution at Billingham on Teesside. By growing tomatoes. Horticulture isn’t exactly what this industrial area is best known for...yet. But this project could put it on the country’s home grown food map - creating one of Europe’s largest greenhouses, heated by waste steam from the nearby Terra Nitrogen factory, and promoting plant growth by pumping in something like 12,500 tonnes of the CO2 that Terra captures in its ammonia production process.

It’s a combination which makes the commercial production of tomatoes all year round in Britain economically viable for the first time. We ate six billion tomatoes in this country in 2004 - averaging about two a week each - and in the winter months they mainly came from Spain and Italy, so the Teesside tomatoes are set to save something like 250,000 food miles.

They’ll sell in Sainsbury’s, who are bringing their muscle to the retailing end of the project. Clancy McMahon, fresh produce buyer for Sainsbury’s, is enthusiastic about getting the goods on the shelves much sooner after they are picked, and thus in prime condition. And why stop at tomatoes from Teesside?

As McMahon puts it, “our concept of linking horticulture to industry could be extended to other sites across the UK, and to other areas of crop production”. It was Tees Valley Regeneration’s inward investment team who originally linked Terra Nitrogen with growers John Baarda Ltd, in a perfect example of ‘industrial symbiosis’. The partnership extends to letting the growers share Terra’s special low price electricity deal.

Phase one of the scheme, geared to getting its first fruits into the supermarkets by Christmas 2005, involved 23 acres of greenhouse. Baarda will be expanding this to 38 acres in a second phase of development, and it’s anticipated that the full scheme should bring as many as 60-65 new jobs to the area. - Roger East

John Baarda Ltd, 01482 667230

6 January 2006

Roger East