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12 Triumphs of the Terravesta Year

  • Blog
  • 5 min read

With a festive flavour, we look back at the highlights from a very busy and productive year. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our growers, friends and Terravesta supporters for their continued enthusiasm and contribution to the future for this wonderful crop. Here’s to a rewarding 2017 and an even busier and prosperous 2018!

January

Welcoming fresh new talent: This year we have welcomed seven fantastic new members to the Terravesta team. We would be lost without the genius of Michael Squance, our trusty computer guru, who joined us as head of IT development and Andrzej Matyjewski who joined as our new manager for Poland and Eastern Europe last January. Also bringing new skills to the team are Tracy Devlin-Gray as accounts assistant, Camilla Helley as commercial manager, Nicola Wozniak, our first in-house graphic designer, and Rafal Plaszewski and Mikolaj Glodek as our field assistant duo, who all joined this year.

Feburary

Farm walk triumph: This year we have run eight busy farm walks, welcoming more farmers than ever before. And this February, we had fantastic attendance at our February farm walk in Gloucestershire, with the Midlands and surrounding counties being a key area for 2017 planting.

March

Fantastic harvest stats: The quality of the crop has been excellent, and we had 42,000 tonnes declared for spring 2017, with less than 1% of bales rejected. We’ve moved 94% of the declared volume, and will be finished by mid-Jan – two months ahead of schedule.

April

Planting record breaker: The total rhizomes delivered to farms was 2,625,000, and planting these at a rate of 15,000 per hectare equated to 175 hectares of land.

May

Seed project moves to next stages: Funded by the EU and a collaboration of over 20 European companies, ‘GRACE’ will be a five-year project, looking at growing advanced industrial crops on marginal land for bio-refineries. Terravesta is managing the planting of all the Miscanthus area within this project.

June

New launch: our new Miscanthus domestic fuel range launched at The Three Counties Show, Malvern. Super sustainable, non-toxic, and providing long-lasting heat, the range was extremely well received, and we’ve been so inundated with orders from new customers and stockists it’s hard to keep up!

July

Terravesta co-hosts Leadenham Polo Club tournament: Our team did fantastically well, but the winning Mount Minster team was well deserving, and we had a fantastic two days entertaining growers and friends at the event.

August

Decarbonising the building industry: Identified as having outstanding building credentials, Miscanthus bales were used to build the first Miscanthus house in the world in Machynlleth, Wales.

September

Snetterton Inauguration: Terravesta has a 14-year contract with the newly opened Snetterton Power Plant in Norfolk, for the supply of Miscanthus bales, and we were honoured to attended the event as a lead supplier.

October

Welsh Miscanthus safari: We spoke to Welsh farmers about growing Miscanthus at an event hosted by Aberystwyth University. We visited a welsh livestock farmer using the crop as bedding, and viewed a Miscanthus trial plot that’s thriving at 1000 feet above sea level.

November

Inundated with Miscanthus interest: The Farm Business Innovation Show yielded so much interest in Miscanthus planting we we’re run off our feet for the two days of the event. We had over 100 new planting enquiries.

December

A massive thank you: To everyone who has supported us this year in our mission to plant and develop more sustainable markets for this wonderful crop. Happy Christmas and a prosperous year to you all and see you in 2018!