£60,000 funding will sow the seeds for overseas expansion for Pymoor company

Pymoor firm CN Seeds is set to grow overseas thanks to a second grant from the Agri-Tech Growth Initiative.

The firm has been awarded £60,000 from the Greater Cambridge Greater Peterborough Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) which runs the growth initiative. The latest grant comes two years after the firm received almost £40,000 to pilot a new variety of vegetable.

CN Seeds is a specialist grower of herb and baby-leaf seeds, supplying seeds to the horticultural industry worldwide.

Having identified the need to produce plants that are tolerant to diseases, CN Seeds will build a state-of-the-art testing facility to grow the business and boost its sales and exporting potential.

The new facility will link CN Seeds’ previous grant which allowed them to develop new varieties of rocket. They can now develop this work further by not only testing for native diseases, but also for strains of overseas diseases on site. Allowing CN Seeds to compete in a globally competitive market.

Mark Hodgkinson, from CN Seeds Ltd, said: “With tighter restrictions being enforced on pesticide application, as a means of combating disease within the baby leaf sector, there is now greater global market demand for breeders to develop plants with inherent disease tolerance. The new disease screening facility will put CN Seeds at the forefront of this race.”

Mark Reeve, LEP chairman, said: “International trade is vital for the growth of our local economy. By providing grant funding to further CN Seeds research into overseas plant diseases we are supporting their overseas trade and further strengthening the agri-tech sector in our local area.”