We supply Coir Grow Bags for UK

If you grow under glass or under plastic in Britain, the substrate decision has stopped being a quiet one. Peat is on the way out of professional horticulture, energy costs have squeezed every line on the budget, and the bag your crop sits in now has to justify itself across two or three seasons rather than one. Coco Labs, We export Coir Grow Bags for UK.

Our coir grow bags are pressed in Sri Lanka and graded for the crop you are actually growing. Every pallet carries the lot report for the material inside it, so the numbers you plan around are the numbers you receive.

Why UK growers move to coir

Three things usually push the decision, and they rarely arrive one at a time.

• Peat restriction. Professional use is being phased out, and growing media that composts at the end of its life has become a requirement rather than a preference.
• Reuse economics. A quality coir slab steamed between crops carries a second and usually a third season. Run the cost across three years instead of one and the comparison against rockwool or a peat blend changes shape.
• Disposal. Spent coir composts, goes back into field soil or moves on to landscapers. There is no tipping fee and no waste route to arrange.

For the full regulatory picture, including the exemptions and the transition timetable, read our guide to peat-free growing media for professional growers.

Sizes for UK systems

British soft fruit mostly runs on tabletop with substrate bags or troughs, while glasshouse vegetables run on gutters and flat beds. The sizes below cover most of it, and anything between them is a tooling change rather than a new product.

Loose material for troughs and gutters ships as compressed coir blocks or husk chips, so you are not paying freight on air.

Film, planting holes and drainage slits

The bag has to match your bench, your plant density and your dripper layout, not the other way round.

• Film colour. White outside with black inside reflects heat and keeps light off the root zone. Full black suits sites where algae is the bigger problem.
• Planting holes. Two, three, four or six per bag, round or cross cut, at your spacing. Uncut bags ship too if you prefer to cut on the bench.
• Drainage slits. Height and length set the water table inside the slab. Low slits drain hard, higher slits hold a buffer. We cut to the height you specify.
• Stake holes. Pre-drilled at your dripper spacing, so nobody is pushing a peg through film on planting day.
• Print. Your artwork, your branding or plain film. Batch and lot codes are printed either way for traceability.

Blends graded by crop

A tabletop strawberry crop and a twelve month tomato crop want opposite things from the same material. Strawberries want air in the root zone and very low salt. Tomatoes want a stable water column that still has air in it in month ten. One blend cannot serve both well.

AFP is air-filled porosity, the share of the substrate volume holding air rather than water once it has drained. It is the number that decides whether roots keep breathing through a long crop, and it is the first thing to check when a slab starts behaving badly.

Washed, extra washed or buffered

Raw coir carries potassium and sodium from the husk. Washing rinses the soluble salts out. Buffering goes further, soaking the material in a calcium nitrate solution so calcium occupies the cation exchange sites, with the displaced potassium and sodium rinsed away afterwards.

Skip the buffering and the substrate quietly rewrites your feed across the first few weeks, which shows up as calcium deficiency in a crop you fed plenty of calcium. For fruiting crops under a controlled fertigation programme we supply buffered as standard. Our guide to washed, buffered and raw grades explains how to read the figures on a specification sheet.

What ships with your order

• Lot test report. Electrical conductivity with the extraction method stated, pH, sodium, chloride, potassium, calcium, particle grading and moisture at loading.
• Container loading plan. How many units, stacked which way, palletised or loose, agreed before the booking is confirmed.
• Phytosanitary certificate. Issued by Sri Lankan plant quarantine, confirming the shipment is free of soil and quarantine pests.
• Commercial documents. Invoice, packing list, certificate of origin and bill of lading, raised together so clearance is not held up.

Running coir if you are coming from rockwool

Coir does not behave like rockwool, and a fertigation schedule carried over unchanged is the most common reason a first coir crop disappoints. Rockwool is precise and unforgiving. Coir buffers, holding water well and releasing it gradually, which is forgiving in a power cut and misleading if you keep the old shot sizes.

The practical changes are smaller shots delivered more often, a first irrigation that waits for real transpiration rather than first light, and an overnight dryback in the 8 to 12 per cent range. Our coir irrigation guide sets out target ranges by crop stage, and the glasshouse tomato guide covers the switch in detail.

Reuse, and when to stop

Two to three crops is realistic for a quality slab that is steamed or chemically sterilised between cycles, and longer for shorter cycle crops. Reused coir gains water holding and loses air-filled porosity, so the irrigation schedule needs revisiting each time rather than carrying over.

Rising fines and a slab that stays wet all day are your signal to replace, whatever season it is. For soft fruit specifically, our second season checklist covers crown rot risk and the flushing step most growers skip.

Delivery to the UK

Direct container loads from Colombo to UK ports, typically 23 to 27 days at sea, plus three to five weeks of production for a fresh lot rather than existing stock. We work on FOB Colombo, CFR, CIF or DAP, whichever suits how you buy.

Trial pallets are available for most sizes before you commit to container volume, and they ship with the same lot documentation a full order carries.

Frequently asked questions

What size coir grow bag suits tabletop strawberries?

Most British tabletop systems run a 100 by 18 by 10 cm bag or a 100 by 15 by 7.5 cm where the trellis is tighter. The blend matters more than the size: strawberries want a chip-heavy mix around 50:50 with air-filled porosity near 28 per cent and EC under 0.50 mS/cm.

Are your grow bags peat free?

Yes, entirely. Coir is the husk left over from the coconut industry, so nothing is extracted to make it and nothing has to regenerate afterwards. There is no peat in any of our products.

How many crops will a coir grow bag carry?

Two to three tomato crops with proper sterilisation between cycles, and often longer for shorter cycle crops. Watch air-filled porosity and rising fines rather than counting seasons.

Do I need buffered coir?

For fruiting crops under a controlled fertigation programme, yes. Unbuffered material releases potassium into the nutrient solution during the first weeks and displaces calcium, which produces deficiency symptoms in a crop that was fed plenty of calcium.

Can I get a sample before ordering?

Yes. Pre-shipment samples are couriered from the actual production lot rather than a reference bag, along with the lot test report so you can check the figures against what arrives.

What is the minimum order for UK delivery?

A trial pallet for most formats, then a 20ft or 40ft container depending on the format and your storage. Minimums for private label runs are confirmed with the quotation.

Talk to our UK contact

Send the crop, your bench or gutter layout and your current irrigation setup, and we will come back with a blend, a bag size and a loading plan rather than a catalogue.

Chaminda Fernando, United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 74 3885 1955
Email: marketing@cocolabs.lk

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