Work officially kicked off at Thanet Earth in November 2007, the site designated to become the UK's largest-ever glasshouse development for pepper, tomato and cucumber production.
The 94-hectare site on the Isle of Thanet in Kent, will eventually house seven glasshouses, a 30,000sqm packhouse, a research and development centre and wildlife and education projects, creating some 550 jobs and producing salad lines 52 weeks a year.
The group anticipates the project will add an extra 15-20 per cent to current UK salad production area. Thanet Earth will also generate its own electricity, using a combined heat and power engineering system and an on-site sub-station, from which it can then sell enough energy back to the National Grid to power 50,000 homes.
The project published its first sustainability assessment report in 2009. The study assessed all the various materials, construction processes and operations contributing to greenhouse gas emissions for Thanet Earth and compared these against alternative sources and techniques, including other UK production and overseas crops grown in Spain, Italy, Israel, Poland and Holland using the PAS 2050 assessment criteria.
The report finds that: peppers and cucumbers grown at Thanet Earth have a lower carbon footprint than current alternative sources; tomatoes grown without lights have a lower carbon footprint than the Mediterranean sources studied; tomatoes grown with lights have a similar carbon footprint to UK grown tomatoes without lights or CHP; and the use of combined heat and power (CHP) actually contributes a negative carbon emission towards the total measured Thanet Earth carbon footprint.
The power is produced more efficiently than most other forms of UK power generation because it utilises both the heat and electricity produced by the fuel. Both DEFRA and the PAS2050 standard recognise this carbon reduction and build it into their measurement criteria.
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