The latest in a long line of East Yorkshire growers has returned to Hull from Dubai to take salads into the 21st century.
Grahame Dunling, together with son Matthew, has launched WorldWide Local Salads, bringing vertical farming to the city where the rich rural hinterlands saw the family well for more than 100 years.
Large swathes of what now forms Cottingham streets once produced the tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and celery that form the traditional 海角视频 side plate.
Now the seeds for gourmet levels of Gulf State fine dining and top end retail are being sown.
Mr Dunling, whose great grandfather was a florist and father moved to salad growing, said: “For the last 12 months I’ve been the CEO of the largest vertical frm in Dubai, now with Covid and Brexit I can see a demand at home.
“Our whole background is salads - the best flavour and texture - and my son said there isn’t a decent salad out there.
“We’ve found that no other grower in the 海角视频 uses the seeds we used there, and that added fuel to the fire. We have the best texture, the best flavour, so we;re now finalising the permissions to get the seeds in.
“We are looking for investment. In this day and age with Brexit and Covid there’s a desire to be self-sufficient. And with history going back to the late 1800s it makes a great story. We’re coming back to do it the modern way. I believe in stories, this area used to be the growing hub of Yorkshire.”
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Not only is his family steeped in horticultural history - traced back to William Wade Dunling - a grower who became established in the late 19th century, succeeded by David and Denis, but his wife is a third generation market gardener from Preston, across the city.
He left school and went to Bishop Burton, studying horticulture and business accountancy, and started his own nursery. It was lost in the recession of 1989, and he started consulting, which led him to Bahrain “growing salads in the middle of the desert in 50 degree heat” for the royal family there. Dubai followed, and a first entry to vertical farming, with micro herbs for the top chefs, before a turnaround with Uns Farms followed, with sales increased tenfold in 11 months.
Pointing to demand, he told how chilli sales have gone up 42 per cent. “I was growing chilli and capsicum in vertical farms. So why not do it in England? Most are doing microgreens and research and development, we’re bringing ‘Dubai gourmet’ to Hull.”
There’s another advantage alongside sentiment and provenance too. East Yorkshire is the epicentre of modular building production - a simple scalable solution. It could lead to multiple sites.
“We are looking for premises, and I’m talking to a company that does buildings that can be sited on open land and that are well insulated, instead of developing an existing warehouse.
“We have a site in Derby, but it is two-and-a-half hours away, an egg producer’s redundant shed.”
Waitrose and Spinneys were supplied in Dubai, and it is a relationship Mr Dunling is keen to rekindle. “People really want to taste a salad, draw a picture with it on a plate. “We weren’t the cheapest salad in Dubai but people kept buying our produce - it is one of those that once you taste it, you don’t go back - we have the flavour and the visual aspect.”