Dyson Farming – 4.7 hectares glasshouse extension

Client: Dyson Farming, Lincolnshire

Project overview:

• 100 tonnes of steel, including trellis beams up to 16m long, prepared at our East Yorkshire factory and delivered to site
• Design and planning of 4.7 hectare glasshouse extensionGroundworks
• Construction of glasshouse
• Installation of bespoke swinging gutter system, irrigation and heating systems
• Build of additional rain-water harvesting lagoon

Scope of our work:

Dyson Farming appointed us to build an additional 4.7 hectares of strawberry growing space after the successful completion of a six-hectare facility in 2020.

Having gained design approval, we returned to site in April 2023 and completed the construction ready to handover to the agreed timescale in December 2023.

To provide a 15 per cent increase in grow space, we designed a bespoke hanging, swinging gutter system that creates space for an extra row of plants every 8 metres.

The Results

The overall site uses heat and power generated by an adjacent Anaerobic Digestion Plant, with LED grow lights helping to grow strawberries all year round.

More than 1.2million plants now produce close to 1,300 tonnes of strawberries a year – enough to fill 3.25m punnets.

The premium-quality strawberries grown at Dyson Farming are distributed to the UK’s biggest and best-known food retailers. The site has a packhouse and cold store facilities, built in phase one in 2020, where strawberries are child and packed, reaching the supermarket shelves the day after being picked.

Steve Baker, Commercial Director at Dyson Farming, said: “Ultimately we are farmers and we grow crops and we are experts in that, but we are not experts in designing and building a glasshouse.

“We can have input into what will work best from a growing perspective, but the experts in building the facility and getting to the right specifications are CambridgeHOK.

“I think they get where we're heading, they understand the demands that we have and they understand the quality that we expect, not just in terms of the build but in terms of everything that goes around a large project like this.

“CambridgeHOK get that and understand it, and we rarely have any issues during the build process which is credit to the team and how well they manage that.”

Watch Video