Meet the Founders: Gabriel? Barte?kait?, Future Greens

We met Future Greens when they joined TEAM SY, the ecosystem accelerator we delivered in South Yorkshire alongside Barnsley Council. Founded by David Dixon, Alexander la Fleur, Gabriel? Barte?kait?, and Alastair Roper, Future Greens was inspired by a vision of growing high-quality produce more efficiently and sustainably through vertical farming.

We sat down with Gabriel? for a chat about how Future Greens has evolved their business model to focus on a new type of sustainable energy, transforming bio-waste into fuel through a process called anaerobic digestion.

Capital Enterprise: You recently changed your focus to building anaerobic digesters. Can you explain what anaerobic digestion does?

Gabriel? Barte?kait?: Anaerobic digestion is, in essence, a controlled composting process that breaks down organic matter in the absence of oxygen to produce biogas. This gas is a blend of carbon dioxide and methane, which can be used directly as a replacement for natural gas or to power a generator to make electricity.

While this process has been around for a long time, it's still not perfectly understood due to the complexities of microbial activity. With our backgrounds in vertical farming, we had experience engineering biological systems for optimal results.

So we’ve taken a different approach. By intently studying these metabolic pathways, we have been designing a reactor that operates as the perfect habitat for the microbes, allowing us to produce smaller, faster and more powerful reactors. Our design is driven by recent advancements in AI, which allows us to understand the microbiome in more detail than ever before, and implement real time, data-driven optimizations.

Now that we are focused solely on anaerobic digesters, our aim is to help food manufacturers reduce their energy and waste disposal costs.

CE: Tell me a bit about your discovery process. What made you realise this was missing from the market?

GB: Future Greens started as a vertical farm, working to improve the sustainability of food production. There are two key challenges in vertical farming: energy and labour. The cost of energy was a big pain while operating our first farm so we refocused on tackling it.?

We considered classic forms of renewables like solar and wind, however, they both come with major downsides including inconsistent energy output, burdensome planning permissions, and require lots of space. Eventually, we landed on anaerobic digestion, which seemed to be the perfect fit for our application.

The byproducts of anaerobic digestion are heat, CO2, and fertiliser, all of which were needed directly on the farm. It led us to fully embrace circularity, using yesterday's waste to produce tomorrow's food.

At first, we set out to buy a reactor for our own site but none of the existing options fit with the amount of space and budget we had available. So we set out to build one ourselves, which in turn led to the realisation that we could actually monitor its performance and customise it in real time, drawing on the data we were generating to produce valuable insights.?

Building the digester for our own operations was a real turning point. We were our own first customer, leading to the development of a modular and scalable product which we can mass manufacture efficiently.?

CE: Who are the customers for this? I’m imagining food and beverage producers, but it could also go much broader.

GB: The entire food sector battles with energy costs, emissions, and waste disposal. Large-scale facilities already have access to the funding and space requirements for traditional anaerobic digestion, so we decided to focus on bringing this to smaller players. There are over 12,000 SMEs in this space and we’ve shifted focus to providing these businesses with a cheaper and more secure energy supply, whilst also helping them reduce emissions through circularity.

A recurring issue for SMEs is high upfront costs, so we are moving forward with a Hardware-as-a-Service business model, charging our customers a proportion of their savings instead of selling the full kit upfront.

We are well on our way to rolling out our first commercial pilot with Sheffield's iconic dairy producer, Our Cow Molly. They kindly provided us with 20,000L of manure to kick-start our digester. It acts as a great inoculum and provides the correct microbial cultures for anaerobic digestion. They are also keen to be the first adopters of our system which will enable them to process their waste into energy on-site while also providing a source of sustainable fertiliser.

We are really keen to work with breweries, and already have one pilot underway, with another one set to launch next year.?

While our initial target is breweries and dairy producers, almost all food manufactures produce some form of organic waste from their processes that could achieve significant energy savings with our system. This is going to be a major step towards decarbonising this sector.

CE: You’re based in Sheffield, where we delivered a number of accelerators through TEAM SY. How would you describe the Sheffield ecosystem?

GB: Sheffield is a very interesting startup ecosystem, despite being so much smaller than London, and we’ve had a lot of great support. When we first started out, Tom Wolfenden and the team at the Cooper Project provided us a workspace and helped solidify our concept before we had any funding. I’ve lost track of how many small businesses have helped out, from lending us tools and equipment to helping trial new products.?

Our team is built from graduates from the University of Sheffield and we have maintained strong ties with the university since graduating. This year, we are undertaking an Innovate UK grant in collaboration with researchers from the university who have gone above and beyond for us. And it’s been great to have support from the University of Sheffield media team, who have been documenting our journey and sharing regular PR updates which is great for publicity and exposure.

CE: Finally, you’re in the middle of fundraising. What’s your advice to other founders who have never fundraised before?

GB: I’d recommend going to as many in-person meetups as possible. In our region, Sheffield Startup Meetup is a good place for engaging with other entrepreneurs and Cooper Project offers tremendous help with the early stages of fundraising, from crafting an IP strategy to meeting with local investors. More generally, we found it helpful to expand horizons beyond the North by attending networking events in London and Cambridge, both of which have active investor communities.