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Business celebrates record year as reputation for horticultural innovation and engineering pushes turnover to £30m

CambridgeHOK is reaping the rewards of investing in technical expertise and innovation as it has enjoyed a record year in 2024.

Ahead of celebrating 70 years in business in 2025, we are proud to have established the business as a ‘go-to’ for expertise in high-tech indoor growing environments, from large scale glasshouses for mass tomato and strawberry production to vertical farms for the growth of leafy greens in controlled environments.

Over the past 12 months we have further expanded our work, launching CambridgeHOK Refrigeration, a specialist company in its own right which designs and installs sophisticated cooling systems and spaces for the food, beverages and pharmaceuticals industries.

That business is approaching the end of its first year in operation having delivered profits and secured a turnover in excess of £5m.

Patrick Harte, joint managing director of CambridgeHOK, says he is delighted with the work carried out this year, and the healthy order book already in place for 2025.

“It has been a really successful year for CambridgeHOK and I feel that in recent years we have really cemented our position as a technical leader which is able to offer industry-best solutions.
That is leading to some really prestigious contracts coming our way,” he said.

“In that sense we are reaping the rewards of having recruited, retained and trained a highly-skilled team here, which continues to grow each year.”

Prestigious, highly technical projects

Now employing 90 members of staff, the company has enjoyed a busy year across both the glasshouse and construction businesses, delivering many highly technical and complex projects.

This has included the design and build of two bespoke glasshouse structures for Kew Gardens in London, each containing advanced systems to control temperature, humidity and light management, enabling the propagation of a wide variety of tropical plants from around the world.

The business was also chosen by the Forestry England to work on a project to grow a greater variety of resilient tree species to be spread across the nation’s forests.

This project has seen the team design and build a protected area for tree seedlings continue to grow after they leave a glasshouse, helping them to become acclimatised to outdoor conditions in a computer-controlled environment using a combination of fans, shade screens and roof ventilation to regulate the temperature, humidity and light levels as they grow.

Other innovative projects completed this year have included supporting a ground-breaking project with Hull-based business, Gooddrop, creating a number of ‘growing containers’ to provide the perfect environment to grow cotton indoors sustainably.

The business also installed a vertical farm in GSK’s new Global HQ in central London - officially the largest vertical farm within a commercial office building – supplying fresh, sustainably grown leafy greens and herbs for its onsite restaurant and café.

“We’ve had a great year and we’ve got a strong order book in place for 2025 already, so we will start next year in our strongest ever position,” said Louis Bradley, joint managing director.

“CambridgeHOK Refrigeration is now well established in its own right too and is profitable and delivering good service levels, with a highly capable team in place this is a business we feel we can continue to grow and expand.

“We have worked on some fantastic projects across a range of sectors for private clients, we’ve innovated and we strengthened our teams, and we continue to build knowledge through our wider group, which is a big part of our success.”

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