Elliot Webb
Founding Partner & Strategic Leadership
Optimise the business, not just the crop.
Commercial expertise. Technical depth. AI capability.
One focus: profitable growth.
30+ projects delivered
Across commercial, technical and AI
Oxford Saïd trained
Leading AI Implementation programme
BRCGS A Grade
Achieved at first audit
11 years farming
Hands-on, from floor to boardroom
Our purpose
Primordia exists to improve EBITDA.
We've run fish farms, built hydroponic installations and taken a mushroom business from start-up to supermarket supply, so we know where margin is won and lost. Our commercial and technical work lifts revenue, improves margins and supports crop performance. AI runs through all of it: sharpening decisions, driving sales, and letting you scale efficiently or cull costs.
We work across CEA, fungi and the associated value chains
- Mushroom Farms
- Hydroponic farms
- Spawn & Substrate
- Seed & Propagation
- Fermentation
- Processing & Extraction
- Equipment & Technology
Our business pillars
Commercial
From strategy through to execution.
We work alongside your team to identify the opportunity, build the solution and see it through.
01Strategy & opportunity
- Strategy, markets & business planning
- Financial modelling & performance
- Investment & fundraising
02Product & market
- Product development
- Brand & positioning
- Go-to-market & pricing
03Growth & delivery
- Sales strategy & development
- Commercial negotiations
- Digital growth & e-commerce
AI & Automation
Transform how your business operates
We use AI throughout our own work to deliver greater speed, depth and capability — then bring that same advantage into your business.
01Strategy & opportunity
- AI opportunity assessment
- Value modelling & prioritisation
- AI strategy & roadmap
02Automation & intelligence
- Workflow & process automation
- AI agents & assistants
- Knowledge, data & RAG systems
03Deployment & adoption
- Systems integration & deployment
- Governance & security
- Training & capability building
Technical
From technical challenge to reliable performance.
We design, troubleshoot and optimise facilities and processes — building capability and improving performance.
01Facilities & cultivation
- Farm & facility design
- Cultivation systems & optimisation
- Scale-up & commissioning
02Performance & capability
- Diagnostics & problem solving
- Process & yield optimisation
- Training & technical mentorship
03R&D, quality & compliance
- R&D & process development
- Food safety & quality systems
- Regulatory & technical compliance
The challenges Primordia is typically brought in to solve
01Commercial
We’re selling more, but we’re not sure what we’re actually making.
Volume is growing, but true cost and margin by product, customer and channel are still unclear. We need the numbers to make better pricing decisions.
We know there’s more value in what we produce — but we’re not capturing it.
Our core product is increasingly commoditised. We need to find the right value-added opportunities and turn them into commercially viable products.
The market is moving faster than we are.
Competitors are improving, new entrants are appearing and customer expectations are changing. We need to know where to focus before we lose ground.
We’ve invested in capacity. Now we need the demand to fill it.
The capability is there, but the pipeline isn’t yet. We need experienced commercial resource without building permanent overhead too early.
We have an opportunity — but we need to know if the numbers really stack up.
Before committing capital, we need an objective view of the market, economics and operational reality — and a clear go/no-go case.
We know where we want to grow — we just don’t have the bandwidth to make it happen.
The opportunity is clear, but the internal team is already stretched. We need experienced resource that can take it from plan through to delivery.
02Technical
We need to upgrade our facility — but we’re not sure what to invest in.
We need to increase capacity, improve efficiency or modernise the operation, but want confidence that the equipment, layout and investment case are right before committing capital.
We’re working towards BRC certification — and want to get there without overcomplicating the business.
We need to close the gaps, build the right systems and achieve certification in a way that is practical, proportionate and economical to maintain.
We know there’s more performance in our crops — but we’re not consistently achieving it.
Yield, quality or consistency isn’t where it should be. We need experienced growing input to identify the opportunities and turn them into measurable improvements.
Something is affecting crop health — and we can’t identify the root cause.
Performance has changed, but the cause isn’t obvious. We need to work through the crop, environment, process and inputs systematically to diagnose the problem and get production back on track.
We’re scaling production — but the operation hasn’t caught up.
Processes that worked at a smaller scale are starting to create bottlenecks, inconsistency or unnecessary labour. We need to redesign the operation around where the business is going, not where it has been.
We’re making too many production decisions on instinct rather than data.
We have plenty of operational knowledge, but limited visibility of what is really driving yield, quality and cost. We need to turn production data into better, more repeatable decisions.
03AI & Automation
Skilled people are spending too much time on work that shouldn’t need them.
Reporting, admin, data entry and routine coordination are consuming valuable time. We want our people focused on the work where their judgement and expertise actually add value.
We have plenty of data — but not enough visibility.
Production, sales, stock and financial data sit across different systems and spreadsheets. We need one clear view of what’s happening and where attention is needed.
We know AI could help — but we don’t know where it will actually create value.
We’ve seen the tools and heard the promises. We need to identify the opportunities that will genuinely improve margin, productivity or growth — and build a practical roadmap to deliver them.
Too much knowledge lives in people’s heads.
Critical know-how, decisions and processes depend on individuals. We need to capture that knowledge so the business can use it, learn from it and become less dependent on any one person.
We want the business to make faster, better-informed decisions.
Our teams spend too much time gathering information before they can act. We want the right data, context and insight available when a decision needs to be made.
We want AI capability we can build on — not another collection of subscriptions.
We don’t want disconnected tools creating more complexity and dependency. We need an AI capability we control, that connects across the business and becomes more valuable as it learns from our data and knowledge.
Who you work with
Core team
John Hardy
Partner & Commercial Lead
Adam Clarke
Governance, Culture & Leadership Development
Francesca Scott-Underdown
Project Planning & Optimisation
Jack Lear
Financial Management
Michael Jeffreys
Data Scientist
Max Tubbs
Technical Consultant
Stefan Novak
Senior Software Engineer
01 / 08
Recent work
- AI transformation project for a real estate business
- Fractional commercial leadership for a UK speciality mushroom farm
- Mentorship for a specialist Lion's Mane producer in Belgium
- Compliance process streamlining for a mushroom VAP manufacturer
- Feasibility and business planning for an urban mushroom farm in Paris
- International business development project for a European biotech company