Portable Gardens That Grow Fresh Meals Anywhere

Fresh food is easy to take for granted until you’re deployed, cut off, or travelling for months with no resupply. We’re joined by Stuart Preston, founder of Okal Astronautics, to talk about a bold idea with real engineering behind it: ag tech that can grow nutritious food anywhere from frontline conditions to future space missions.

Stuart shares how 16 years as an Air Force aircraft engineer shaped his approach to building hardware that has to work first time, under constraints, and under regulation. We unpack Okal Astronautics’ plug-and-play plant pods, their Rugged Garden portable grow chamber, and the longer-term vision for Botanic Sky, a space agriculture system aimed at long-duration travel and planetary surface missions. Along the way, we dig into why controlled environment agriculture matters for morale as much as calories, and what storage and refrigeration challenges appear when you start thinking beyond pre-packaged astronaut food.

We also get practical on the startup journey: how networking opens doors in the space ecosystem, how early “spray and pray” VC outreach turns into a focused investment strategy, and why rapid prototyping and fast iteration are non-negotiable as commercial space stations and Moon and Mars timelines accelerate. Stuart explains how AI tools help him move faster on software and firmware, plus what it really takes to scale manufacturing through suppliers, PCBs, and more robust power options like batteries and future solar.

If you care about space tech, resilient food systems, hardware startups, or the future of sustainable agriculture, this is one to share. Subscribe, leave a review, and send this to someone who loves building things that matter.

Transcript

Welcome From Studio King Street

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hi, my name is Neil Monday, and I'm your host for the Sterling Business Podcast. The podcast is brought to you from Studio King Street here in the heart of Sterling. You can book our wonderful studio uh by going onto our website uh and making your booking that way, or sending uh an email to inquiries at studio kingstreet.com. Or you can simply pick up the phone and give Laura a call uh to make your uh make your booking. So, over to this week's episode of the Sterling Business Podcast. So, Stuart Preston, uh founder of Okal Astronautics. Welcome to Sterling Business Podcast. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. So thank you for making the trip over to Sterling today, uh to our studio in uh studio King Street here. So um the first question I'm gonna ask is are you an astronaut? I am not, I'm an engineer. Right, okay. Uh we've got that one clear. So um so uh thanks for coming along. I think uh it's fair to say you've got a very interesting uh business proposition uh and and business that you've uh you've taken to market, which we'll hear all about. Um so I'm under I'm keen to understand your background and how you ended up here. But why don't we just start by you telling the listeners and viewers who you are, Steamer, and what your background is before um starting OCLAstronautics? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Uh so yeah, my name's Sher. I um grew up in quite locally in Minstreet. Um I went to Alpha Academy and joined the Air Force. That was that was my my main role. Uh I did 16 years in the Air Force as an aircraft engineer. And as part of that, I traveled the world, did a lot of uh you know tours in the the nicer places in the world, like America and things like that, but also did things like the Middle East and Afghanistan. Um I then left a few years ago, went to a major bank uh to sort of broaden my horizons a little bit, and then went to a large defense firm as well to really get my teeth into being an engineering manager. Um, and then that's where I sort of started Okalateraltics.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Right, okay. So, what does your company do? Uh, and how did you end up working in the sex fighting sector?

Why Fresh Food In Extreme Places

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Well, that's that's a longer story. Um so I grew up on a farm. Um, my my dad was a farmer, and I've always had that sort of connection to nature. I loved climbing uh the Oakal Hills and things like that. Um but I went on uh, you know, I I've always had a love of space. And whilst I left Air Force and went to the bank and the defense firm, I was kind of like, I want to do something for myself, you know. And I kind of brought everything together, my experience of engineering, my love of nature and things like that. Um, and ultimately that love of space. Uh Oaklash Rotics, we're an ag tech firm. So we're developing systems to grow fresh food tech. Ag tech. So agriculture technology, sorry, should expand. Um yeah, so we're developing tech to grow fresh food anywhere, so extreme environments. That's like frontline and even up in space, hence the name of the company. Um it comes from my background from deploying to places like the Middle East uh and Afghanistan, where you're having to eat food uh repetitively again and again, and it starts to hurt your morale, hurt your performance. Um, and so what I would have loved back then was access to you know, being able to pr pick fresh food uh for myself and possibly even choose what I want to eat uh rather than being handed like you have to eat this and you have to eat this. Um and yeah, that's that's kind of the ultimate story of why I started the company.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Okay, so how long have you been going for now?

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Um just about two years.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

Um not quite, but yeah, coming up on two years. So you're beyond the kind of startup mode. I guess you're now scaling, are you, in terms of your business?

SPEAKER_00 4:10

We're kind of still a startup. I started the company when I was still working full-time for uh the defense firm. Um, those early days, I was kind of trying to get my head around what is a company and how do I run a company. I'm not from a business background at all. Um, doing engineering has always been my passion and all I've done. Um, so I had to get my mindset right. So I did some accelerators and things like that with like Barclays Ego Labs. Um so those early days were slower. We didn't make a lot of progress. It was just about me learning how to run a company. Um but now the past sort of year, it definitely the last six months has been a real like we're going. So we're still at the startup stage, but now we're looking like right, we're ready to scale.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

And how does your team currently look uh in terms of scale size?

SPEAKER_00 5:00

We're still a small team. There's three of us. Um I'm the only one working full-time at the moment. But and the dog. Yeah. So four of us, sorry. I shouldn't forget the dog. Um, so as there's myself working full-time um as the CEO and like chief engineer. We have Matt who helps on the science side of things, he's a biologist. Um, and we have Laura who's doing the marketing and operations sides of things, and then yeah, Jet, who's our people relations officer.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Great. Um, and how did you come up with uh with the name?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

So it's it's actually from growing up around here. Uh, like you said, uh when I joined the Air Force, I moved away. Uh that was sort of age 19. And but I've always had a connection. I always obviously come back. There's family here and things like that. But the Oakwood Hills is really where I grew up. But then I was claiming them every weekend. Um just I love the area and I want to move back here. So at the moment we're based in Glasgow, but we will move back here once we have a sort of first funding round in place and things like that because it's space, isn't it? A premium in Glasgow, but space has a high premium. So it'd be great to move back to Sterling and actually bring some of this industry, the space industry, to Sterling because I feel like there's not a lot of it in Sterling.

Building Rugged Garden And Plant Pods

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Um, well, maybe we're gonna have a conversation at some point about establishing yourself in number 45 King Street. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, brilliant. Okay, so um your website defines you as a hardware engineering company. Uh so what products have you engineered and developed? And and what does the pipeline currently look like for you guys? If you can share that.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Uh yeah, I can. Um so yeah, it's all on the website. Um we've got a few products, um, but we're really we're underpinned. So we have our plug-and-play plant pods. So these are plant pods that have our growth medium in them, um, are seeded and they're delivered as a unit. Um they are backed by our support systems. So at the moment, our main product that we do have is Rugged Garden, which is uh a portable and personal uh food growth uh chamber that you can carry around with you. It almost looks like a pet carrier, right? Exactly. Yeah, it says uh we we built it to be sort of kind of suitcase-sized. Um, like I said, my background from the military is like, right, can I picture myself bergen, rifle, and take my garden with me uh on deployment? Because that's what it's for. It's you pick what you want to grow. That's why these plug-and-play plant pods exist as right, I want to grow tomatoes, I want to grow chilies, but you don't. You want to grow basil and lettuce. Um, you like an ice green uh diet, so you pick what you want to grow. Um but yeah, rugged garden, we've built that out. Um, botanic sky is our space system uh that we're beginning to develop. Um and then always that all of that is supported by firm there firmware that we've uh developed, and then we've got like an accompanying app as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

So all underpinned with um you know, with with with uh did you call them the plant pods?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yeah, plug-and-play plant pods. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

It's all underpinned by that, but you've got different use cases and different types of that's it. You know, engineered devices, boxes, whatever you want to call them.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Yeah, that's it. It's uh that's my background is the engineering stuff.

Frontline Use Cases Plus Space Missions

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Okay, so um you mentioned a couple of sectors there, um, you know, frontline in terms of uh military but and also space. So what where are these products typically used and how how are they used um in those different examples?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah, so um we're still getting through the sort of customer acquisition stage right now. Um, but what we see is uh the brocket garden unit being used at the front line, also possibly disaster zones and things like that, where people have less access to fresh food. Um because of the automation, you don't need to know how to grow a plant. The system does it for you. You just have to pick it and eat it, watch it grow if you if that's a because that's the morale angle from it. Um the Botanic Sky application, which is, like I said, spaces where we want to be. Um that is going to be used by astronauts. We're looking at sort of planetary surfaces, so the moon and Mars, um, and those journeys to Mars. And those are the discussions we've had with space agencies, is that these are long missions and we can't rely on pre-packaged food. We need to grow food on the way. Um so yeah, that's that's the application for for those.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

And uh is it a crowded marketplace, this? I wouldn't have thought so.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

No, it's deal. There's a there's a few operators out there, um, but the majority of it is research-based. So there is food already growing on the International Space Station. Um, but most of it is research-based. It's determining how things grow in space, do they grow, and what's the best things to grow. Uh, what we're looking to do is kind of commercialize that. Um and yeah, there's this it's really not a crowded market, but that also makes a difficult job for us in determining what's our value and how do we advertise that to investors. Um it's a tough call.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Um, well, and to potential clients, right? And clients, yeah, definitely. Because I would have thought, um, given the kind of nature of where you're going to be you know putting some of this product, I would have thought it would be pretty highly regulated as well, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, definitely. Um I mean military and space are very similar in that the there's a lot of regulation around it. Um and luckily that experience of being in the defence uh sector both through my career and in at the defence firm, I I understand it. I understand the amount of regulation around it and how to navigate that. Um but there's a lot and there's a lot to get through, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah, I can imagine. And from a um you know, I guess it's all about growing fresh and nutritious food in in you know for the most extreme environments. Do you have any plans to branch out into other areas outside of nutritious food in extreme environments?

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Um Yeah, I mean there's gonna be for things like Mars missions and things like that, we're looking into what kind of support systems they need around that and you know, how to store the food. You grow like say we're we're looking to grow lots of uh tomatoes and things like that. They're not gonna eat all of them immediately, and then there's gonna be a gap where you grow the next batch of tomatoes. So we need to look at storage of refrigeration. Refrigeration is it, yeah. Um there isn't much of that at all in the space industry yet. So if there's more there's more challenges to meet around that, but that lies the opportunity, right? Trevor Burrus, Jr. Correct. That's it. Yeah. There's a I think there's a lot of opportunity for commercial entities to get into this market.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Yeah. I suppose you're probably pretty limited in the battlefield because you don't want to be carrying a fridge as well as a fridge. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

I mean they already do when you look at like sort of forward operating bases, main operating bases, they do already have that refrigeration like containerized, isn't it? Um So there is that opportunity. And that's why it's more of a personal experience when we're looking at the frontline. It's it's your portable garden that you grow yourself rather than scaled up. It's customer custom grown for you, basically. Exactly. Um but with the space market, that is a completely different beast for us.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

And uh how do you even get into a conversation with a space agency to try and sell them the a lot of networking.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yeah. Um when I first started the company, I was like, I don't even know what I'm doing. How do I start this? Um and it was luckily it was through Barclays Ego Labs. I was first introduced to um you get a champion once you've finished their um programs. I did the veterans program. They give us the space champion and he just knows everybody. Um I don't know if I'm allowed to game drop or anything, but he he knew everybody, and he's like, right, you need to come to this event, you need to come to this event. And he was just starting to chat.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

You don't think of a of a banking institution being completely networked in terms of the space sector, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:23

Yeah, exactly. Um I think it's his passion, definitely. He he loves it. Um and it's because of that, and it's how he's integrated himself into the industry, he knows so many people, and he's like, right, Stuart, you need to speak to this person. Stuart, you need to speak to this person. Does the introduction to not what you know? Yeah, exactly. Um and it's built up to the point where you know we were doing uh I was speaking on a panel at Spacecom uh uh Glasgow, um, and I met the uh Chief Health and Medical Officer of NASA, and then that sort of kicked off the conversation. Okay. And then we went to Florida as part of a DBT mission um to Space Commercial Week. Um and this I met so many people there, and that's where like the balls really started to start rolling.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Wow. And uh are some of these partnerships uh these ecosystems that you you you kind of these networks that you're building, are they starting to formalize, or are you starting to create a supply chain of structure?

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, that's that's the biggest thing about these shows um in the space industry is getting to know all the suppliers and who can possibly help you out um in terms of contact and things like that. Um and yeah, but the the ecosystem and building around the company is what's gonna sustain us for a while, I think.

Funding Lessons From Spray And Pray

SPEAKER_01 14:39

And I guess probably the biggest focus for business like yours would be large investment in RD, research and development. Yeah. Um that typically comes with uh you know deep pockets, I guess, right? And it you know, looking for investment investors. Um how are you kind of approaching the investment side of what you're trying to do to scale?

SPEAKER_00 15:01

So initially, um, like you said, having not been in business, um I thought, right, I need to contact every single VC firm out there. So it was uh spray and pray, hit all the VC firms, and they all said, no, you're too early stage. What is your tech? Do you even know? Um so I kind of rolled it back a bit. Um and we're we've luckily been supported by uh organization called Pira International, who gives our first kind of um policy funding. It was an RD commercial grant, um, and that that managed to kick us off. That's sustained us, that's how I'm now full-time. Um, and we're now in that round again of right, we we need investment. So it's now a more tailored and focused approach to finding investors who are uh focused on the space industry or ag tech and are looking to get into our small bit of the space ecosystem early on. Um and that that's that's the key difference now. And that you know, that's from a learning point from us is making a focused approach on picking out the investors you need to speak to rather than spray and pray and just. And how is that going in the early days? Um we're we're getting more callback, which is good. There's more pitching rather than straight off nope. Um so there's more pitching going. So they're listening to you. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, they're beginning uh focus. Because we've now built a product that we can show them, um it's it is winding up and getting a bit better.

Three Year Vision And Fast Iteration

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Right. Okay. So so where do you see the business in I I guess it's such a fast moving sector, right? Space in particular is, but I know you're addressing other uh sectors as well. But um where do you see the business in say three years from now? What would you like if you were looking back at the headline, what would it what would it say in three years from now?

SPEAKER_00 17:00

Uh in three years, we'll be one of the primary suppliers of food growth tech to the space industry. Um we'll have a much bigger team. I I want to grow it to at least 20 by next year. Um we need that.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

It's it is quite where would that investment typically go into more research uh uh areas?

SPEAKER_00 17:20

It is research and manufacturing as well. Um we want to build these products um quite quickly. Um it's all about iteration. There's commercial space stations going up in the next few years. The you know, the whole plan from NASA is get to the moon by 2030, having boops on the moon again permanently um and going to Mars isn't that far off either. So we need to iterate quickly. Um and that comes from my sort of I've always enjoyed lean and things, and it's all about iteration, is we need to research this and build quickly, fail fast and learn and get something out there that works. Um, and that's that's kind of been our approach for the past six months is like, right, let's build this.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

So has it taken two years to bring the first two products to market? Um has it been a bit longer than that? I guess what you've been kind of trading for a couple of years?

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Yeah, well, that's it. We've we've been trading uh for two years, but I think the the products have really taken shape over the last year. Um we threw something together extremely quickly to get to London Tech Week last year. Or the rapid prototype idea. Yeah, and it was rapid since then. And we learned a lot of lessons from that prototype. It's now making we're still iterating quickly, but it's more focused iteration on like, right, this didn't work, let's change this, let's bring in these. Um there's a lot of commercial off-the-shelf items that we're using, um, but it's bringing in the right things um quickly.

AI Assisted Building And Manufacturing Plans

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Okay. So if there was a kind of an an ask of the business community out there, you know, there's there's lots of investment, as we know. It it's all about kind of kind of finding that and obviously, you know, pricking the conscience of somebody that's interested in the particular sector that you're um you're building in. But is there anything you'd you'd want to ask of the uh the you know the business community at this stage?

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Um I think it is so at the moment uh we're in uh a sort of scale-up um shared workspace in Glasgow called Stack. Um and the reason we're in there is they have some incredible facilities that we can use, uh like mechanical workshop and a media lab, things like that. Um I'd love to see that in Sterling, and I know that's now I know that's what you're building here. Um because, like I said, this is somewhere that I feel connected to and I want to have the company operating in. Um but it's it's you know, make a bet on the startups, you know. We some of the people I I know now and that work with in the startup community, we're doing some really cool things um really quickly as well, you know, um leveraging the AI and things to help you scale quick is you know, there's some really cool techniques.

SPEAKER_01 20:12

I was gonna ask you about your application of AI and how you've started to use it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Um we we we use it with our software a lot. Um I I mean I'm a hardware engineer. I've I worked on aircraft, you know, pulling out boxes, putting them in fault finding, working out electrical faults and things like that. Software was never my thing. So I've had to very quickly learn how to write software. Leveraging AI has sped that up massively. I mean, I could have waited to start the company and spent six months trying to learn software. Now, you know what, let's just build it. We'll build it. I'll code hey, AI model, does this work? And be like, no, there's an error here, it's an error.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

I guess you know, in in today's age, you know, we're we're not doing water waterfall project management or anything like that anymore. It's all agile. So you have to move quickly and you have to adapt and you have to change and you know, MVPs, we used to call them, minimal viable products, you know, fail fast. I think you used that word earlier on. Yeah. Um, so I can imagine in your sector you've got no time to lose. You've just got to No, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

I mean, because yeah, we uh said like there's not a lot of operators in this uh small part of the ecosystem, but there could be. So it's about getting there first and getting something out there and getting that customer required that like, you know, here's our MVP, let's get let's work together and let's build the next version of this. Yes, develop it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Yeah. And have you um you talked a little bit about manufacturing earlier on. Um have you got a a plan to scale that at this stage? Or how would you do it? You know, have you got a there's no factory processing?

SPEAKER_00 21:48

That's that's one of the things that we're trying I've been trying to build over the last sort of six months is that ecosystem of suppliers, um, like trying to work out who can do what, um, who can build what for us. You know, we're we're looking at um producing PCBs and things like that for this. Um and you know it took me a week to build the enclosure for our portable rugged garden. I can't be spending a week or weeks trying to build multiple of these units. I need a supplier to build that for us. So um how do the power are the solar powered or how how do we get power to these gardens? Yeah so at the moment it's uh mains powered with batteries um but yes eventually solar power is going to be the way forward because we are talking about operating in disaster zones, frontline things like that. You're not always going to have access to mains power going to be a lot of a lot of sun in those areas and so it's not going to be a massive change for us really um since adding solar into our system with batteries already is not of course.

Where To Follow And Wrap

SPEAKER_01 22:50

Okay. Good well um thanks for coming along uh where can the audience find out more about Oakal astronautics?

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Um our website is great but our LinkedIn is or my personal LinkedIn is next level. That's where uh we do a lot of sharing of what's going on in the company um whatever sort of news blasts and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

You talked about blogs so I guess there'll be trends what's happening in the sector and that's it. You know how this development our little newsletter works.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

And we are bringing out uh an an email newsletter as well um and we'll share more about our food not just the engineering but you know the the science side of the company as well. Great.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Sounds exciting.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

It is good luck with it.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Thank you. And it's um a really really interesting sector very topical at the moment with what's going on with um related submission as well so uh so thanks for coming along and uh hopefully we'll see you a bit more permanently in Sterling sometime in the in the not two days fingers crossed cool thanks Stuart thanks Neil take care cheers bye bye so that brings us to another end of an episode of the Sterling Business Podcast thank you again to our guests this week remember to follow us on the YouTube channel on Spotify and Apple Podcasts until next time stay safe