172: Gyroplant's Game-Changing Superstructures for CEA with Marcus Comaschi

Harry Duran 00:00:00:

So Marcus Comaschi, R and D engineer at Gyroplant, thank you so much for joining me on the Vertical Forming podcast.

Marcus Comaschi 00:00:06:

No problem. Great to be here.

Harry Duran 00:00:08:

What time there? You're in UK, right?

Marcus Comaschi 00:00:11:

Actually in Australia. So it's 7am here. Yes. Which makes timings of meeting very difficult sometimes but it works.

Harry Duran 00:00:20:

What brings you to Australia?

Marcus Comaschi 00:00:23:

Ah, interesting story. I actually came over here for an agricultural conference conference in 20 January. January, February 2023 I was meant to be here a week at the Evoke Ag Conference Adelaide and it's now been two and a half years so it's been a Wow. A bit of a journey. I was traveling around and ended up meeting my partner here, Emily, who lives in Australia. So I. You spend a lot of time here but on a lot of time back in UK and Europe as well. But interestingly there's lots of work going on here in the CE world. It's close to facilities. It's actually a great BE I think for the agricultural CA world.

Harry Duran 00:01:05:

I think we were separate was chatting with you or he mentioned to me that you guys had connected or something like that. Except for my partner on at Igro News. Do you remember when that conversation was?

Marcus Comaschi 00:01:15:

Oh, I met Sep I think first in New York which is maybe where I met you and then Green Tech get a chance to catch up with him this year.

Harry Duran 00:01:23:

Okay, so you were at GreenTech?

Marcus Comaschi 00:01:25:

I was at Greentech, yes with my co founder Oscar. We were wondering okay around I saw PR above in each room but I didn't get a chance to say hello.

Harry Duran 00:01:35:

Yeah, the most of the team was the only one that didn't make it out there was me. I think that the timing didn't work but separate was there Diletta who's helping us manage our community now the network then a couple of our writers, Tia Otto, you might have met her as well. So I've heard good things about it and it's definitely on the calendar for next year. I have a friend or two out in the entertain that I'd love to connect with again. So what was your take on the conference?

Marcus Comaschi 00:01:59:

It was interesting. I didn't go the year before. I think the first show you as a startup when we knew nothing about the CA world was green tech in 2023 as well. Yeah and it's very like shows everyone's promoting obviously a various technology which is brilliant. It's. It could be. It was overwhelming for me and I'm an engineer so I can't imagine what it's like for a grower at a farm. Because there seems to be a lot of technology. It was. It took actually for a while for me to understand a lot of them. I really had to deep into conversations with.

Harry Duran 00:02:35:

Yeah, yeah.

Marcus Comaschi 00:02:36:

So a little bit overwhelming. I would like to have more technology or platforms to assist the. The decentralized community. It's one of my core passions.

Harry Duran 00:02:48: Okay.

Marcus Comaschi 00:02:49:

We hear the terms scale a lot and it's important in a lot of contexts. I understand that if I was a grower with a small polytunnel or a community farm, I don't think there was much there for me, to be honest. So I'm always trying to incentivize those small to medium grower technologies.

Harry Duran 00:03:10:

So we'll get into your CEA story for a bit, but you've got seems like a bit of experience with design and even spent some time at Ford Motor. So is that something that coming maybe just coming out of university, Is that where you thought you'd end up just being an engineer for the majority of your career?

Marcus Comaschi 00:03:29:

Yeah, it's definitely been an interesting journey. So I studied well. When I was at school, I was the person, the kid who loved design technology. It was pretty much anything I was good at and naturally I went on to an engineering degree which was great. That teaches you the basic physics of what's possible and the standard formulas you can use to apply to many different situations. However, for me, after working at Ford as a placement year as an industrial engineer, I really wanted to. I took an interest in the core design, the thing that was being made in the first place. So why are we creating this objects? I understand that an engineer's role is to make it happen, but the question of why are we making this happen and is this a good deer? Could we actually go down other avenues in the first place? Even getting quite philosophical, that really intrigued me. So then I studied a design masters at Imperial College London and the Royal College of Art, which is all about bringing people together from different areas. Everything designed art, to historians, to accountants, to civil service people, and actually answering those questions, fundamental questions of what are we doing? How can we actually shape the future rather than just be the engineers who made the thing, who is the person or the company saying this is what happened? So all of those really intrigued me and I ended up being a freelance design engineer after that, working for different startups. Being the design engineer, I was prototyping, printing, machining and developing prototypes for real areas. Everything from toilets to bottles. It was very, very varied. However, there was a point on my masters where I Did a project food. I wasn't naturally to be honest, I wasn't actually interested in food when I started the food project. I was interested in packaging, transport and cultural shifts. And I think if you look at them the first topic that actually comes up is food. So actually palm sentence initially was the other subjects. So I designed a hydroponic system at university on reflection was totally ridiculous but during COVID I actually picked up the topic again and started tinkering around with the hydroponic system. And we designed in the shed a small circular rotational deep water culture slash NFT system. And this really intrigued me. So it's always been about those initial ideas, creativity playing around with experiments and so the food world was just perfect for that. So I'm not really that's in a nutshell how I fell into it but I certainly didn't intend to when I was younger to go into food.

Harry Duran 00:06:20:

What's your earliest memories of food?

Marcus Comaschi 00:06:24:

Earliest memories of food? Definitely hanging around granddad's allotment in Brighton. So I grew up in Brighton in the city. Not from an agricultural background at all. The closest I got to food was going into Tesco's or Sainsbury's and up mill Deal classic complete. So going out to my grand was actually incredible. It was the smallest farm which he's worked on for decades.

Harry Duran 00:06:49:

Yeah.

Marcus Comaschi 00:06:50:

But what really struck me was the simplicity of was reusing bathtubs to hold water. It was pipes from old hoses, it was from waste wood. It was very self sufficient but beautiful its own ugly way.

Harry Duran 00:07:06:

Well I imagine as a child some of those worlds probably just seem fantastical to you. We can go play in those spaces.

Marcus Comaschi 00:07:13:

It was exactly right. It wasn't just about food. It was a great place just to be and play. And the food was the cherry on top at the end of the day. So that definitely probably influenced greater than only on a reflection app. So that was the first memories and seeing farms but being quite in awe of what, what it meant to be a farmer but feeling scared because I knew nothing of it. When you used to walk around the countryside in the UK it's very beautiful and it's nice to appreciate the farming. But yeah, in your head I know nothing about how this works.

Harry Duran 00:07:48:

Yeah.

Marcus Comaschi 00:07:49:

So yeah, get me close to that for sure.

Harry Duran 00:07:52:

I think it's an awakening for many people. I myself grew up while not in New York City, just outside the first city outside the borough of the Manhattan, the Bronx and Yonkers which is the first majors. But it's an industrial. It's not it's the suburbs, but it's still city living. And then obviously when I had the first chance I had to went into the city. So I've always been in city. I thought I'd always be in the city. I consider myself a New Yorker at heart. And then after that I spent some time in la. So I was in LA for four years. So I was doing both coasts, big city living. And then now I find myself in Minnesota and I've been here now probably for about. Yeah, about five years now and five plus years. And we're just outside the main city on just under an acre of land. We're growing our own produce now. We have chickens, we have our own. We're lucky enough to have our own. Well, grew up as the house my partner grew up in actually. And we just happened that we thought we were going to come back for part time while in between places and the more we stayed here, the more we realized what a magical place it was. So just speaking to what you were saying, it's an adjustment to think about things and think about where your food comes from. Her dad is a hunter so he's hunted everything from turkeys and deer and I think he's up in Alaska right now as fishing the salmon. So you just have an appreciation and awareness that's different from when you grow up in the city and you go to the grocery and everything's in the freezer section and you just assume that it's always going to be.

Marcus Comaschi 00:09:21:

That's it's so interesting. My partner is from a agricultural background as well in inland in Australia where lands very quickly and I'm in awe of experiences and yes, if I could live it again, I would love to have been brought up in an agricultural background. But now I can just pretend I am the agriculture. Yeah, I mean from nurture.

Harry Duran 00:09:46:

I think it's been interesting because the show for me, which I started in 2020, was my interest in vertical farming. I just never knew where it would take me and I just. It was first an awareness what was happening with the disruption of the supply chain because I had started the Show in late 2019, the concept so I didn't know even what was coming. And so like the local food deserts, interruption in supply chains, hyperlocal food, all these became front and center. So it's been an interesting journey for me. But I've always been like a lover of technology at heart. So I'm curious as you've been in design for a greater part of your career, where you see the innovations happening in the 3D printing space. I'm just always fascinated by how much progress is being made. There's the holy grail is like parts on demand or anything you need, you can just whip it up in your basement or something. So I'm just out of my own personal curiosity, wondering where the industry is at nowadays.

Marcus Comaschi 00:10:42:

Well, I have 3D printing to thank really for being able to take our business forward. When we started it was all printing prototypes, technology and without I think maybe two years earlier than that, we wouldn't have been able to protect home. Would have cost maybe a thousand dollars per prototype and we were whipping out prototypes at $10, $5 a piece. So. And we really up because we were failing a lot in our early design journey. And so it was absolutely crucial. At one point I had four 3D printers that all produced in very low quality early stage gyro cups, which is our technology now. Yeah, it was probably around 200 iterations till we actually got to a design. So 3D print printed part showed to the manufacturers and how do we like this? So yeah, firstly it was completely key and it's still key to our business because we have to prototype our parts on a weekly basis. And so 3D molds for vacuum casting for our silicone rubber plugs is absolutely imperative to testing but also developing custom solutions. So a lot of it's outsourced. We still do a lot of 3D printing in house. I was 3D printing yesterday and I actually like using the public 3D printers. I don't know if you've seen, I'm not sure if you have this in the us but a lot of libraries around the world are attaching maker spaces onto the side libraries. So they have 3D prints, laser cutters, sewing machines. They're essentially little innovation hubs in the most places. And that really intrigues me because you never know who's going to kin to a maker space. It could be an 85 farmer or it could be a 12 year old kit.

Harry Duran 00:12:40:

Yeah.

Marcus Comaschi 00:12:41:

So you know, the ideas I've had of them and had on our designs is probably more sometimes than some people in the industry. So it's. Yeah, I'm very intrigued in design journey and design processes and 3D printing. It just getting better every every day. New machines out, needed to outsource new materials, especially for soft materials. There's new rubbers, new silicones that can be 3D printed. It's. Yeah, it's incredible.

Harry Duran 00:13:08:

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about the origin story for gyroplant like what was the need you saw and how did it evolve to current day?

Marcus Comaschi 00:13:17:

Yeah. So to give a bit more context, when I was on my masters doing my design engineer course, I designed a hydroponic system. It was a hydroponic system to actually sprout barley for fodder. And there was a big trend at the time of oh, I get a container on your site and you can feed your cows barley with fresh fodder. And the pictures were incredible. You've probably seen them, the lovely fresh food coming off of a container farm. I mean it looks like I could eat it. It was amazing. So I designed a more efficient version. As I noticed there was a big problem with cost and the complexity sometimes of the hard way. Even though at its very simplest it's just putting into trays. The infrastructure is costly and scares a lot of growers, especially small growers. They can't afford a multi tens of thousands of pounds of equipment to have a supplementary barley. It's not. It wasn't feasible for many. So yeah, I doubt the whole okay, efficiency in barley fodder expanded to designing a rotational hydroponic system to grow other plants that potentially feed cows for supplements. But also then it turns out, oh, we could use as many humans but knowing that there's always going to be that how are you going to compete with a huge hydroponic greenhouse or a huge green own production. So from there it was cut off. I left and needed money to. So I had to become that freelance design engineer and Covid I designed. I went back to the system, started tinkering around and as it was a rotation we had to figure out a way to hold a plant upside down and we couldn't really achieve that with some of the substrates that were available. It was just a bit messy. How do you ensure that it doesn't fall out? So that's designing 3D printed versions of holders to hold the root mass of a basil plant, of a lettuce plant. And we came up with this very strange looking design. It was an early stage which is what we have now. It's a reusable silicone rubber superstructure to hold a plant and all as a result of design this very strange hydroponic system. And I still, yeah, I still can't believe I'm still working on it even though I was just playing three and a half years owner shed. So it was an interesting journey to get there and we wanted some feedback on our hydroponic system just for a personal sort of. Oh yeah. We took this to a company I'm all about feedback and ensuring that the growers and the users of these technologies are involved in the process. So I actually took it to a couple companies who were involved in the indoor farming world and they started highlighting the issues around substrate. And for me I was asking questions like what is substrate and what is media? What is. What do you use to hold a plant? I knew of one which was coir and then sort of the can of worms open in the substrate world and they were very interested in eliminating substrate. And then there was this great sort of synergy of ah, we can use this without substrate maybe because the superstructure to hold roots. Yeah, the plant scientists, well let's test the trial. And it sort of kicked off from there really then a really rapid maybe year long process of just back and forth, designing, prototyping, testing leafy greens. The gyrocop was born really from that. And then I went commercial about six months after that and then we started designing more and so we ended up specializing in designing and manufacturing custom superstructures to hold plants. Everything from leafy good berries to tree saplings to pack choy. It's. Yeah, we didn't. There was definitely intention of this. There was an intention to make with eliminating substitution rates. We didn't really appreciate at the time the diversity of crops that we could actually help. So it's all still based around eliminating and reducing substrate use for grow. And that's everything from houses to polytunnels, aquaculture systems all the way to space ag, everything in between. So that's home hydroponic systems, vertical farm contain farms. And even now I've got a. This is the little tent. Just got a little germination testing station. Yeah. So talking about 3D, pretty much everything there is 3D printed apart from the G rays to test germination, different crops, the new designs, new inserts. So yeah, it's been a good journey and we're still small but we're very lucky. We have picked up a UK government Innovate UK grant early days and that helped us scale up and trial new designs to hold plants in the uk really.

Harry Duran 00:18:29:

So when you're having those early conversations with farmers, what was the main driver for them behind the need to eliminate the substrate?

Marcus Comaschi 00:18:37:

Right. So initially they didn't like that. It was. CEA prides itself on a cleaner, easier to maintain growing system. It's designed with cleaning in mind. But we've still got this fibrous, messy, clunky substrate around the whole system which for many growers was not ideal. And when we spoke to plant scientists, they would say substrates they're not diseases are spread. We don't really know what's in them. So to put some context into this, if you're using a coir plug, you don't really know where that coils come from. You don't know where it's been. It's not really clean. And so they have to implement other strategies on whether that's chemicals, heat treatment and other infrastructure just to clean this input that they don't even really like. So that was from the plantists, the cleaners in the farm. It's just gets everywhere. It causes algae growth, bits fall into the plumbing systems, into the pumps, the filters. Yes, it's our biggest headache. And then the business people in the in come, they didn't like the cost and they saw that the cost was increasing. And when Covid hit and supply chains, global supply chains do shut down, it causes a huge impact with substrate. Your farm will stop. So it's a risk. The CA industry is all about creating a resilient farming network. But it's only as resilient as as the reliable, the reliability of the supplies that come into it. Right. So everyone seems to be bored with if we can grow plants without it or reducing it as much as possible. We're all for that. So and it's the same we hear it today every if you're growing tree saplings or if you're growing a Pak Choi. I don't think I've ever heard plant scientists or someone oh we love this substrate. I've never heard that being said. And whether that's a coir or cube or it's a new bio alternative, the idea of a single use material coming into a farm, we see the demand to change that.

Harry Duran 00:21:03:

And what was the state of the replacement substrate industry prior to your connection with it? Was there plastic being used or what was happening for people that were looking for an alternative?

Marcus Comaschi 00:21:17:

Yes, plastic. It's interesting because it varies in different parts of the so in Asia plastic and plastic sponge popular in Europe it's very much Rockwool and Coir based and then the same similar in America. No other major alter alternatives for reusability unless you've designed your with elimination mind. But they were having issues with that so there wasn't actually a major competitor there. It's great that there are some startups now in the area. It's definitely a growing market and there's the companies as well looking to sustainable substrate alternatives, which is all great, we're all for that. But if we're setting up a farm in the middle of remote location in Canada or Australia, it doesn't matter how sustainable that single use material is, you don't need to get it. So we know the farms that are thriving right now, the ones that are really actually remote and providing food for those communities which wouldn't be able to get that food. It's a core value of CEA and they're the ones cannot have the single use substrate coming in. They have to go self sufficient and resilient and they're the ones that we support. There are. When we think about vertical farming, I think everyone tends to go towards either a container farm or a big scaled indoor mega farm. And they all serve in different contexts and different communities and ourselves niche communities. So the remote farms could be a high value crop that really needs precise irrigation and we can't rely on the water long of a single use substrate or plant research R and D lots of different contexts within cea. And so yeah, we now work with the growers and the to these companies to develop those solutions specifically for that type of humidity irrigation system. As the world vertical farming and CA is quite decent, it's quite unstandardized. So everybody's got a cool irrigation system. Brilliant. And that requires a different design process as well for them.

Harry Duran 00:23:37:

Yeah, that's got to be very frustrating. It's something that's been discussed a lot, this lack of kind of consistency and standardization and everyone's trying to develop their own proprietary systems and I think hopefully wake up call that the industry has had over the past couple of years would encourage folks to start working a little bit closer together. I had a great conversation this morning with a Dutch greenhouse grower who has worked in. He was coming from a family of greenhouse growers and he was telling me how his father has raises tulips, great grows tulips and they get together with the other tulip growers in the industry and which would even be considered competitors. And they're talking to each other regularly what's working, what's not and how's the system going. They've even invited them each other to their respective farms and their greenhouses to see what's working, what's not. And it's such a refreshing perspective, right. And to say hey, I've tried this, maybe you should try it. But I think we need to see more of that, I think within the RO farming space. And now that the hype has died down a little bit, maybe we will.

Marcus Comaschi 00:24:38:

It's interesting, right? We call it vertical Factors vertical farming, horizontal farming, circular farming. It comes in all shapes, shapes and sizes and everybody's got a different shape, a different of a different fundamental concept of how a vertical farming looks which is great. And all sectors like this. Ryan, as you mentioned there's lots of beginning you develop in some veil some. So I think you're right, the hype has died down and we're going back to food and different simpler ways of making food for communities. As an engineer it's very interesting to see hydroponics at its most fundamental Simplest form is water nutrients in a pipe and we've taken that and an enormous amount of complexity onto it sometimes for very good valid reasons, tremendous cost and there's a sweet spot for different communities and I think for some communities a really high tech automated farm is suitable. I would say that there's just so much opportunity elsewhere for indoor farms. The we it's proven with our customers that our customers we know who are they just have runways with investment money. They actually have money coming and choose is the small decentralons they're not the big scale ones. So it would be nice even answering about your green tech question to go to a show where I could be a grower and I wanted to set up a choy farm or a legume farm for hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions but tens of thousand dollars which is totally possible but we don't have enough design. We, we don't have. These aren't placed there, they're placed on the high end produce. So yeah it would be nice to see a bit more of those accessible technologies. We're very aware of that as well as a provider there's a cost to hardware for sure and if you can design we design a hardware to reduce costs long term it's quite a clear value proposition when see it and we see the technologies being implemented at the high end of very high subscription. It only really affordable if raised millions as a company it's not the growers. So we're really trying to work hard and it can be difficult to work with those small polytunnels, those small greenhouses and help that thrive as well as the newer high tech farms.

Harry Duran 00:27:22:

So when folks decide to work with you or explore one of the products are they just at the point where they're frustrated and they have a specific need from you or are they looking and exploring new crops to test in your system and they're maybe doing trials with you?

Marcus Comaschi 00:27:39:

Yeah, so we sometimes we get approached there's. We get a lot by the plant scientists within the company who are looking to test crops and everyone's doing different substrate trials. It's an endless game. Scientists who have been testing different substrates to germinate and grazing for decades. And so when they see an alternative I think from an experimental point of view it means they can set up a very test and they can add things like biosimulants to them and they're not being affected by the. By the substrate itself or the things that are coming in with the substrate. A clean grow test is really important. They may not necessarily have in mind oh we will use at scale on the farm but it's a reliable way to grow plants on a research basis. But then naturally from that from those trials they find oh, we can actually control the growth in a reusable alternative. We can precisely the irrigate, we can precisely place biostimulants in there and we reduce waste. It's easy to maintain. Why don't we this actually at scale so it normally starts off the journey okay, need to test, need to trial some new plants compare to stuff see the impact on the plant. We've just done a trial with the University of Britain for example and fantastic results across all different types of irrigation systems. And others see that and others in the company see that and say ah, why don't we actually use this in the farm? It's a bit of a curveball because the industry and happens with every sector. If an industry to something it's quite hard to then drastically shift the paradox eliminating the thing that everybody's been working on for the past few decades. So yeah, mostly it's through the research but sometimes we do growers get in contact and when we're at show it's a great way to work with the technology providers themselves. It's no our technology and integrate it into that infrastructure, the wider infrastructure in the first place. So working with the container farm companies, vertical farming companies is really important to us and that's reach our different markets and communities. And that could be anything from a energy farm system, a research lab inside a container farm or a SAP propagator before being planted out in the forest. It's very varied. Naturally that leads to those custom solutions that I was mentioning of what type of superstructure is best for the grow themselves and how do they use them. Whether it's manual, what seed, what variety, what irrigation system it's on a good design means you're designing for them. And that's what we do on a daily basis.

Harry Duran 00:30:36:

It must be interesting and such a welcome challenge for you as an engineer to problem solve, when you're encountering all these different inputs, and you mentioned saplings, for example. I imagine there's something about the nature of a sapling as it's being grown in these controlled environments that lends itself to having a solution created. Because you keep using the term superstructure, which I think is fascinating. Can you explain how that thinking or design process happens? And when you look at something, I imagine there's certain pressure points that probably would be damaging to a crop at certain parts of it. And you sort of have to look at it holistically and say, what's the most effective way to handle this crop? So it's not damaging and allows it to receive all the nutrients that it needs.

Marcus Comaschi 00:31:21:

Yeah. So overall thoughts of it could be a little bit cheesy. So forgive me of. We don't like to problem solve, but problem eliminate. So traditionally an engineer solves a problem and creates 20 other problems. And that's. I, that I, I understand that. I've been that person to solve, to create more problems.

Harry Duran 00:31:43:

Yeah.

Marcus Comaschi 00:31:44:

In my, in serious work. And sometimes, yeah, we fail and we design solutions which do do create more problems. So we're very aware of this as a design team. So what does this mean, design process? If we get someone in contact with us who wants to grow a particular crop we've never grown before in an irrigation system, that's very different to what we're used to. We have to assume that we're going to fail at it because the chance of getting it right first time or even third time is very, very low. And that's okay. The growers know that, the technology companies know that. And we actually made that clear to everybody that when you get a jar cut for the first time, you probably will fail. And that's okay. Just bear with it. And we with them, we. It's not just about the technology, the protocols and growing procedures to use them within the farm. So we really have to work together to come up with a protocol that works for them and a design that works for them. And the best way to get to that point where you don't have, for example, other strays on the plant is it is by testing and iterating. It's the only way we would love to be able to simulate how a crop will grow in a superstructure of ours and just tweak the design based on that. But the reality is we can't do that. With one of the beautiful things about being in the plant world, it's. You can't. You never really know unless you've tried it. It's so beautifully organic. Unlike the traditional engineers mind we regimented and standard. Yeah sort of. There's this great mesh of the engineered and the organic together in one and that's never going to go to plan initially. So yes some processes are longer than others but as we grow as a business I've got around about 120, 25 live projects. It's. They're all doing different things. It's. We're learning and we get better prescribing a protocol for a different crop, an irrigation system but the initials. I feel sorry for our initial partners for sure because they were probably on their longest design journey with us but now it's fairly quick so we like to running within about three to six months depending on the crop site.

Harry Duran 00:34:08:

How big is the team now?

Marcus Comaschi 00:34:10:

We have two full time and then we work with multiple subcontractors and we work with the UK Agri Tensor as well.

Harry Duran 00:34:18: Okay.

Marcus Comaschi 00:34:19: So it seems like we're one big one big team runs but it is just still two full time people doing this work. So we like to keep things all and keep it lean and we can means we can make decisions very quickly and we can subcontract any route we need to take place. And we work with people like Fighter who also start same time as us who do our research the UK center and so that's all great. It's brilliant. We get we're able to test new designs at scale on their additions but really the best person to test the user. So we give our technology out to different people around the world. It could promote farm in Australia, it could be a research farm in California and then that feedback is very, very essential for us to design new superstructures.

Harry Duran 00:35:12:

Yeah.

Marcus Comaschi 00:35:14:

So yeah we have different partners.

Harry Duran 00:35:16:

What is a tough question you've had to ask yourself recently?

Marcus Comaschi 00:35:20:

Oh, which one do you want to know?

Harry Duran 00:35:24:

I'm sure it sure changes by the week.

Marcus Comaschi 00:35:26:

Yeah, it certainly does. Which one should I go? I think where focus has been a recent one. There's many opportunities for us it could be for highly automated technology. Our tech, our reusable superstructure. So for example the idea of transplanting seeding a gyrocap requires a lot of time energy. But do we design that ourselves? Do we work alongside a partner or do we focus on the smaller farms? Do we focus on the research of the farms where to the energy of the company is a tough one at the moment. For example we know that scale up fairly quickly within the small farms. When I say scale I Think the things that come to our mind are scale means future mega farm. But no, scale doesn't really mean that in our heads it means scaling up a greenhouse, a small greenhouse or a polytunnel or a research farm. It's important to us. So not putting as much focus sometimes on the business and business opportunities but may not have the best impact. They're different things. So focus on which partners is something that we have to thinking about now as we get lots of interest. But we only have so much time design energy and we've focused on particular crops, particular systems and sizes as well. So that's a sort of a more holistic one. But interesting on an everyday brand is always trying to design the next version of the Jaraka. So it's always leg was longer, shorter, wider if that had a crevice in was ratio. I don't know if you could 16 one of our products in person but they must star shape into a cone.

Harry Duran 00:37:32:

Okay.

Marcus Comaschi 00:37:33:

There's a million things you could do to that to improve it. And that's a continuous process which makes it very fun and interesting to be honest.

Harry Duran 00:37:42:

Be fun if you could work some of that, some of that Fibonacci spiral geometry into your designs.

Marcus Comaschi 00:37:48:

And it's interesting. You must have a really good mathematical formula to design the different cuts in different sizes for different crops. And as much as. Yes, the reality is the bending of rubber from something that's not rigid is very, very hard to simulate even with the best. And so it still comes down to similar to our trialing to our plant Trials is error 3D printing. It's always the way.

Harry Duran 00:38:20:

It's the age old trial and error.

Marcus Comaschi 00:38:23:

Yeah, yeah it is. And that's. At some point I'd love to write a book about design theory and design journeys and I think the CE world is a has some great case studies for how to design effectively and a failure is a major part of that process. So next time you see me, I'll show the failures we've had.

Harry Duran 00:38:49:

Yeah, I mean it's. What do they say about Edison that there was a thousand light bulbs before he finally landed on incandescent.

Marcus Comaschi 00:38:57: Exactly there. I think it's becoming quite openly spoken about now and it's okay to say that you failed at something and yeah, it shows part of your journey. But yeah, that's certainly the element. You don't want to fail, you don't want that. You do your best to make sure you don't. But it's okay if you, it's okay if you do.

Harry Duran 00:39:17:

Yeah. And definitely as an entrepreneur, I can definitely relate to that. It's. I think what I've learned over the years is this idea of failing forward or getting up faster and just dusting yourself off and just saying, okay, that didn't work. There's one more thing I know that doesn't work and let's go try something else. And I think because in the beginning, the first couple of failures hit you hard and either in your pocket or in your gut and. Or in your hit to your pride. And I think as you become much more seasoned, you learn that's part of the journey as well.

Marcus Comaschi 00:39:45:

Yes, exactly. Although I'm the lead engineer, I run a good section of the business as well. Everything from accounts to HR to everything that comes with being an entrepreneur. And yeah, sometimes that's tough. It's a learning curve the whole way. But it's much easier. It's nicer to fail in a design element rather than your tax. It's definitely a focus where the failure is.

Harry Duran 00:40:12:

No. So as we wrap up Markus, I'd like to leave a little bit of time at the end of these conversations for any thoughts you have or you'd like to share with the vertical farming or indoor farming community in this in the spirit of collaboration and getting us to sort of speak and share more of what's top of mind for us.

Marcus Comaschi 00:40:31:

Yeah. So pun intended. I need to plug our plug and it's one which we really need to work more with those small to medium grow. If you're listening to this and you're thinking about setting up a farm, I was on a WhatsApp messaging thread this someone trying to set up a small farm and single and I really want to meet more of those people. I think when you go through platforms like LinkedIn and there's the companies there which is great but we're really keen to speak to and even yourself with your own farm, I want to hear more about at some point. Connecting with those is. And those individuals is really important to us. I think the indoor farming world is finding actually probably just finding its feet and we really would like to say to people to look. Look at some of our case studies online to see how we slightly disrupted the traditional models. So for example grid farming so utilizing indoor farms to grow and we're getting early stage berries with D to then transplant out to greenhouses. That's one example of how there are many more models just the industrial farm to grow lettuce. There's so many other types of crops, so many opportunities for youngers as well, to make farms, especially in the uk. It's. I think the next five years are going to be really interesting and the complementary technologies are. I think they're going to become more accessible and I really want them to be. So I would like for more technologies to have that young grower in their mind when designing and yeah, let's see Green tech next year, what will be there? But other than that, if anyone's interested in growing plants in a cleaner and more sustainable way, would love to help in any way we can. So thank you for listening.

Harry Duran 00:42:39:

So we'll have the. We'll redirect folks to gyroplant.com and then your LinkedIn if they want to connect with you as well to follow up. So I'm glad we were able to make the time work. We're in completely different time zones but somehow we're able to make it happen. So I'm glad we were able to connect and hopefully we can get to meet up in person again. Looking probably indoor icon is next for me, but I'm definitely putting Green Tech 2026 on the calendar as well.

Marcus Comaschi 00:43:04:

Yeah, sounds brilliant. I've already got thoughts at the back of my mind envisioning your farm now, Harry. I have a vision of creating a polytunnel farm and I don't know what it is about chickens. They seem to be the cherry on top of a wolf small holding farm and design a highly circular small farm at some point in the uk. So I need to your tips and from you later in the day.

Harry Duran 00:43:27:

Sounds good. Well, I appreciate your time Marcus and sharing your journey. I'm sure our listeners will find it fascinating.

Marcus Comaschi 00:43:32:

Thanks Harry, I'll chat to you later. Nice to talk to you.