"We were here for a moment, then we were gone"

The following article, "Reflections on Vertical Future", was written by Jamie Burrows, the founder of Vertical Future, originally published in his LinkedIn newsletter, "The vertical farming journey". He shared the article with the following post:

"It's been a long and sad summer for Vertical Future staff, investors, my family, and I. I still believe in the CEA sector, albeit have altered my thoughts with regards to time to market maturity at scale, aligning with capital market sentiment. As a company on the tech and science side of the equation, I wanted to share some thoughts to correct the press that came out and to hopefully pass on some learnings to help other companies.

Standalone vertical farms can work in geographies with acute climate and/or supply chains (with cheap energy) but will always be limited by the crops that can be grown, unless selling into premium markets. I think the future for vertical farms is alongside low-and high-tech glasshouses and broader agriculture for propagation in a value chain, utilising data science, crop recipes, space optimisation and plug transplantation for propagation. Vertical Future already proved this through side-by-side trials and I hope that this continues.

It's all about flattening that production and price curve throughout the year, irrespective of market or product, utilising CEA and traditional agriculture at specific times of the year that will fix the problem that has existed for many years, and will only worsen unless fixed.

I'll still likely be involved in the sector alongside some other Board, Advisory, and Trustee positions. Get in touch if you want to chat.

We were here for a moment, then we were gone. I wish you all success, luck, and positive outcomes."

© Vertical Future

Reflections on Vertical Future

Introduction
It's been over a month since Vertical Future went into administration and many people have asked me to comment on what went wrong for a company that had achieved so much and was one of the earlier adopters outside of the U.S. I also wanted to make minor corrections to the press and to pass on knowledge so that this sector continues to grow and prosper, especially with many great companies out there and new market entrants looking for direction.

Naturally, as Founder and CEO for almost 9 years having put it all on the line with a belief in improving the food system and latterly, other interesting use cases such as reforestation and alternative proteins, VF's rapid and sudden demise has been a bitter pill to swallow. As an entrepreneur, this is something I cannot ponder on too much though, because it's the people that joined the team and the investors that supported us that deserve the credit and support moving forward. After all, they believe in the idea and foster it.

For all those team members and investors I have not been able to contact due to lack of contact details, I want to thank you for your years of hard work and investment, respectively. I'd also like to thank those of you that have reached out with kindness and appreciation, which shows true humanity and character. For the few of you that acted improperly, leading to VF's demise, I forgive you all but just ask that you reflect on the impact of your actions on people, that I warned against. Unfortunately, myself and a consortium of investors were unable to pull VF out of admin and the efforts of many have been wasted, but we tried and were unlucky.

Successes
After pivoting from being a grower in 2019 (which was a success), VF achieved a great deal considering a comparably low amount of capital raised relative to revenue and loss metrics for other players in the sector, and continuous layoffs in recent years due to the instability in capital markets. It's important to note that designing and building an entire integrated system, including a SaaS product is generally a loss-making activity until large-scale projects are closed.

From 2020 to 2025, VF's investors were supportive through multiple investment rounds and this enabled projects of many sizes, with differing models, and in different geographies. This also supported advances in plant science through many grant wins and collaborations which ranged from strawberry research through to working with NASA and the European Space Agency through to advancements in alternative proteins. VF received numerous awards in engineering and plant science and in 2024 and 2025, was named as the #1 CEA company globally by the "FoodTech 500". VF also came first in the global "Get in the Ring" competition, beating 5,000 other start-ups, and was a "Global Innovator" in the World Economic Forum.

© Vertical Future

Learning from failures and bad luck along the way
I'll be very frank for the benefit of those who want to pursue tech development in the CEA sector and cite our failures (and by that I mean, VF is no longer to support customers, as one example), and also be candid about our bad luck, which had an acute impact on resources.

- Carrying out projects during supply chain uncertainty and/or instability (in our case, COVID): Forgetting the massive overspend, uncertainty due to slow or absent supply chains not only cost the business far more than expected, but importantly, broke the relationship with our first major customer due to time delays and other factors. Whilst many factors were beyond our control, as they say, "the customer comes first" and we were unfortunately unable to mend that.

- Choosing who you work with: Perhaps the biggest financial impact on VF over the recent years has been the inability to recover funds (from a customer than entered involuntary insolvency) at a stage when the project was near completion, and we were substantially out of pocket. To put this into context, almost 2/3 of the cost of the project was lost on this, excluding time and staff costs and other intangibles, and equating to approximately 1-year of run-rate. Staff morale should not be understated in such a scenario either.

- Taking on too much stock: At the time of administration, had excessive stock not been purchased, at least another year of operations would have been viable. This was likely the most bitter pill to swallow as this was avoidable through better process management and moreover, the specificity of the stock meant a resale value of less than 20% (at best), meaning that VF went down with a "sinking ship of treasure" that nobody wanted. Financially, this was close in quantum to that of the project that went into voluntary administration.

- Lack of sales in a difficult capital and customer environment: Earlier projects required no sales team, but in the 14-16 months before administration, the bulk of VF's time was placed on a large deal in the MENA market (significant concentration risk), which, for some reason (despite highly positive study results and customer feedback), did not close and at the same indebted VF due to unexpected delays, eventually draining cash. Adding further damage to this was the need to retain staff (despite significant layoffs across 2014) in order to have a degree of operational readiness.

Press publications reporting on VF's demise, absent of accurate information, focused very much on the ~£10m loss reported last year, following the trail of previous vertical farming companies, which have predominantly been growers, reporting far greater losses and potential mismanagement. Taking into account the writing off of the insolvent project, overstaffing of staff due to the expectation of the MENA project, and general operating costs, the £10m almost nets off. In summary, VF went under with stock and cash at bank that could have lasted up to two more years, and advanced projects, but unfortunately never made it.

I hope that this information is able to provide the market on the tech side with some confidence and learnings. VF failed due to a mix of bad decisions (which happen in every business), negative capital market dynamics, a bad customer (our biggest), stock management, and latterly, concentration risk.

I wish everyone in the sector the best, once again thank all our staff, investors, and customers, and hope that these insights have helped in some way for the rest of you. I'll see you all around and see you on the other side.