One of the things I love about Zayndu is how fast everything moves. Cold plasma seed priming is an amazing new technology that gives farmers a welcome boost in productivity, and if we’re honest, we are still learning its potential.
We have experienced some fantastic highlights in 2024 that are worth sharing.
It has been an “interesting” year, with the fallout of the end of cheap money continuing. Regardless of the talent of the people involved, the funding and economic environment changed so much that the growers with massive infrastructure who were industry leaders became unsustainable. There were many failures—not because the technology failed or the growers were less capable, but because they were based on swiftly outdated assumptions.
Failures in the sector hurt the industry; investors are much less likely to invest when their last venture in CEA went badly.
In addition to this, climate change contributes to a decrease in agricultural yields from the available land. In the UK, 2024 saw a very late start to the growing season, which reduced yields and increased our dependence on imported produce. Add to that the high labour cost, and we can see it’s been tough. Other regions around the world face similar issues; while the effects may vary, unpredictable weather patterns present new challenges for agriculture in meeting our food production needs.
We see ourselves as part of the solution, taking sophisticated technology and delivering a robust, repeatable process for growers. Here are a few of the important moments as we move the technology into the mainstream.
Boosting Grower’s Results
Cold plasma seed priming is all about delivering additional yield for growers. Nothing beats seeing that yield benefit in a commercial production environment.
We often can’t name the growers due to confidentiality—but sometimes we can share pictures, like this incredible image from “a large pot herb grower.”. The average difference in height was 28 cm vs. 20 cm, showing the tangible benefits that ActivatedAir™ cold plasma seed priming can deliver.
Collaborating with World-Leading Researchers
We have always claimed that ActivatedAir™ seed treatments give more produce without affecting quality. So, Zayndu worked with the UK’s National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) to prove it.
We were thrilled with the results!
The cold-plasma-treated seeds yielded slightly better quality plants than the untreated seeds. The gain was small, but that was not the point of the trial—the really significant outcome from this was that the grower got 20% more spinach with no loss in quality. That’s exactly what we wanted to see!
Here’s a video of our head of plant science, Alberto Campanaro, explaining the trial better than I can.
Testing More Varieties and Crops
We’ve not been standing still in terms of the crops and varieties where we can offer yield-enhancing cold plasma seed treatments either.
A year ago, we boasted that we had experience with over 100 varieties; through 2024, that number has essentially doubled. In many cases, these are subtle variations. For example, we have growers producing a dozen different varieties of spinach. Of course, some of those treatment protocols are very similar, but we’ve also added some really unusual treatments. Some of the work on tree species for reforestation has been particularly interesting and will no doubt be published in 2025.
The benefit of all this work is that when a grower wants a seed variety we already know, we can deliver systems that “work out of the box.”
Using spinach as an example, many growers use varieties like Rijk Zwaan’s Sun Angel or Platypus, or perhaps Pop Vriend’s Sioux or Carmel varieties. These are fantastic seeds from quality brands, and we can supply treatments that provide immediate benefits. Where a new variety is required, we can use these as a starting point—requiring only a little optimisation, which can usually be done in weeks.
SeedCloud
Something critical to me in growing this business is ensuring we support our customers, giving them what they need to be successful. That’s not even slightly altruistic—no grower can rely on unreliable systems or suffer downtime, especially if they become Critical Control Points in food production processes, so it is in our interest to deliver the best service possible.
While we started as a spin-out from a leading UK university, we quickly discovered that ActivatedAir™ was globally significant, with growers contacting us from every continent (except Antarctica!).
From the outset, we realised we needed to be able to support users remotely—perhaps coaching or training new operators, using predictive maintenance to maximise uptime, or even providing an audit trail for food standards inspectors. This became a key responsibility for Daniel Miller, who managed the architecture, design, and coding of what has become an incredible tool. It does everything we asked of it—and nobody was prouder than me of Daniel when his team rightly won recognition at the Made In The Midlands awards, recognising engineering talent in the UK’s engineering heartland.
Plasma Evolution
A curious transition has happened through 2024. Looking back a couple of years, all our internal conversations were about making cold plasma actually work—in the real world. Team meetings were dominated by discussion about plasma stability: how do we make it work better when we have damp seeds, dusty seeds, and weird seeds?
These topics don’t come up any more. The discussion has moved on. It is all about what we need to do for machine certification in a new region, how to make systems easier to use, shorten treatment times, and translate the signage into Spanish or Arabic…
Part of me misses the excitement of developing a brand-new technology—we are doing things nobody else has ever done. We’re using cold plasma, with only high-voltage electricity and a minimal energy budget, to create “artificial lightning” next to living organic material, which is often damp or dusty. We’re expecting that system to reliably and repeatably generate the right recipe of ActivatedAir™ to deliver amazing crop results. And it does.
It is a natural part of exploiting a new technology. We’ve moved from the cold plasma technology being the challenge to more prosaic details.
Making cold plasma work with the real world of farms has been a mighty achievement of a truly multi-skilled team. Now everyday questions like saving audit logs to help growers with food safety inspections or discussing factory integration to ensure it drops into existing systems are the day’s topics.
While I miss the conversations about cold plasma, it has made me realise just how far we’ve come with this fantastic technology—we’ve come to accept that the cold plasma system, our crown jewel representing decades of development work, is something we are taking for granted. “That bit just works,” which feels weird after so many years of development!
Globalisation
A really positive sign for Zayndu’s future is the global nature of demand for our systems. While we have many opportunities worldwide, we want to ensure we only roll out systems when we know we can provide top-class support. So we have had to disappoint many growers in the Southern Hemisphere and Asia as we’d be spreading ourselves far too thin at this stage.
Most of our installations are currently in the UK and the US, but an exciting new region for us is the Gulf, where there is so much emphasis on improving food security.
Many of the states in the GCC are investing heavily in expanding agriculture, with work on soil improvements and desalination for field growers. A favourite for me is Silal’s solar-power desalination trials (Silal Launches First-of-its-Kind Solar Powered Desalination Project), but also the massive expansion in greenhouses and vertical farms, such as the plans for FoodTech Valley’s Gigafarm now under construction in the UAE (Home Page | Food Tech Valley)—or the even more ambitious LINE project in Saudi Arabia, which includes vertical farms within a whole new city concept. (About NEOM: Pioneering the Future of Liveability and Business)
We’re excited to be working with some of the biggest growers in the Gulf region, and now, with installations running in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE, we’ve become adept at assisting with the unique challenges that many of these growers face daily.
Of course, we’re not neglecting the vast expanse of North America—we have installations across the continent. We currently support all users from the UK, giving them access to the best possible technical support. This is a task considerably eased by SeedCloud, which allows us to monitor systems, support and coach users, and even offer an audit trail of seeds processed, dosages delivered, etc. Still, we hope to bring more local support partners and distributors in North America through 2025.
Team
No wrap-up of our year would be complete without a mention of our incredible team.
On the R&D side, we have scientists pushing the boundaries between advanced plasma physics and plant science. At the same time, in production, our team is entirely focused on “OTIF”—On” Time, In Full—making sure that every customer gets the system they wanted on the date it was promised. They’re a great group to work with, and perhaps it is fitting to mention that production has been shortlisted for another “award—“Young Professionals of the Year.” Winners will be announced in December—keep your fingers crossed!
Outlook
I’m writing this on the USA’s Thanksgiving Day, and looking back, it has made me realise how much I have to give thanks for! We’re very fortunate to be working with a technology that delivers in the way it does—the value proposition of this technology is evident. I am very privileged to be working with such a capable team, and I look forward to seeing what amazing things the team can deliver in 2025!