GrowUp Group owed creditors almost £120m when it filed for administration in the run up to Christmas, new documents have shown. The report prepared by insolvency practitioners at Interpath also revealed the price paid by former CEO Marcus Whately and private equity backers to buy the vertical farming site in Kent.
GrowUp became the latest casualty in the controlled environment agriculture (CEA) sector after struggling to drum up interest in its latest fundraising, as revealed by The Grocer last month. The group appointed administrators on 16 December, immediately selling the operational business, GrowUp Farms, in a pre-pack deal.
Sun Capital Partners acquired the assets, including a 100% shareholding in GrowUp Farms Ltd, for £1.9m, according to the Interpath report. The London-based PE firm was advised by Whately, who led GrowUp for six years until he resigned in November 2024.
The deal included an additional “anti-embarrassment” provision, which would see the buyers paying the administrators more money if they were to resell the assets for a higher price within a specified period.
Whately told The Grocer last year it remained “business as usual” at the vertical farm and the fundamentals of the company were “strong”.
Creditors set to miss out on large sums
GrowUp raised £140m in funding since 2022 to support the set-up of the Pepperness vertical farm in Sandwich, with most of the investment coming from Generate Capital, which committed a large amount via convertible loan notes.
As a result, the US investment firm, which was the largest shareholder in GrowUp, is owed £113m. It is expected to receive a payout from the pre-pack deal, with the amount – likely to be just a fraction of the total owed – yet to be determined.
Other creditors, including individual shareholders and consultancy firms, are unlikely to see a return of any money owed, while HMRC is not expected to be repaid the £400k-plus in tax arrears.
GrowUp hired investment bankers at Nomura in early 2025 in the hopes of raising a further £100m in a new equity round, the Interpath report said. However, a lack of interest led to the business scaling down the ambitions to a smaller raise of £25m.
Investors had been spooked by a string of high-profile failures in the wider CEA space in the UK, Europe and the US.
After a fruitless process, GrowUp eventually engaged advisors at Interpath in September 2025 to explore options and help it find a buyer to save the business.
GrowUp Farms origins
GrowUp was founded by Kate Hofman and Tom Webster in 2013. It became the first vertical farm to supply bagged salad brands to the major UK supermarkets, launching Fresh Leaf Co into Iceland and Spar, and the Unbeleafable range into Tesco.
The brand has since expanded distribution into Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Ocado and Co-op.
Despite turnover ramping up from £578k in 2023 to £2.9m in 2024, the farming operation was heavily lossmaking, racking up a combined pre-tax loss in those two financial years of £32m.
Operations at the vertical farm were unaffected by the administration and it continued to supply supermarkets with bagged salad. The pre-pack deal saved the jobs of 83 staff, but 30 employees at the group level were made redundant by administrators.
The former management team, led by CEO Mike Hedges, who joined in late 2024 to commercialise the business, all left following Interpath’s appointment.
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