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Scottish Agritech Business IGS Appoints First CFO To Enhance Leadership Team And Support Global Expansion
With many countries developing national food security strategies there is an increasing emphasis on sustainable food production
Appointment of Sarah Willis Will Bolster Readiness For Rapid Growth
Edinburgh, Scotland – 31 May 2021 – Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS), the Edinburgh-headquartered agritech business, continues to enhance its executive talent as it welcomes Sarah Willis into the role of Chief Financial Officer. Sarah’s appointment reflects the company’s need for substantial transactional and commercial financial experience to support IGS’ global growth strategy in the vertical farming market.
With many countries developing national food security strategies there is an increasing emphasis on sustainable food production. This is driving a rapid maturing of the vertical farming industry, generating significant levels of momentum from customers, consumers, and investors. IGS’s strategic position fits very well with these developments enabling the company to enter multiple regional markets this year.
Sarah’s role will be pivotal as the company looks to expand its operating base over the coming 12 months, ensuring operational support, corporate governance, and reporting structures are fit for purpose. She will be responsible for the company’s financial management, HR, admin support, and new office development, working closely with IGS CEO David Farquhar and the Board.
Sarah joins IGS from Spirit Energy, where, as Head of Finance Operations, she was responsible for the financial integrity of the company which generated over £1bn of revenues. Prior to that, Sarah was in senior management overseeing operational and financial performance at Centrica E&P in the UK and Europe. Sarah is a qualified Chartered Accountant, starting her career with KPMG and latterly Deloitte in Aberdeen, before joining Wood.
Working with highly regulated industries throughout her career, Sarah brings a strong commitment to due diligence, risk management and governance. She brings broad, multi-national M&A experience which will boost IGS’ ability to roll out across its global markets. Her financial and stakeholder management experience will further enhance the relationship with the IGS investment and shareholder community helping transition to a capacity expansion phase in this exciting industry.
Talking about her decision to join IGS, Sarah commented: “The opportunity to be part of a business like IGS is really exciting. The combination of the talented team, the incredibly innovative technology, and the prodigious industry growth was compelling for me.
“The company has achieved remarkable progress to date, reflecting its purposeful approach and hugely passionate team. I believe strongly in the guardianship of the planet – we must leave it in a better place for the next generation - and businesses like IGS are genuinely committed to this belief and have embedded this in its approach so well. I am delighted that I can be part of this ambitious team to help support a positive evolution in food production for the future.”
David Farquhar commented: “Sarah is a hugely welcome addition to the leadership team at IGS, as we seek to further diversify and expand the talent across our organization. She joins our business at a crucial and pivotal point in our evolution, bringing us a fresh perspective from the energy industry particularly, whilst expanding her own capabilities and leadership skills in her first CFO role.
David continued: “The IGS growth curve is steepening sharply and Sarah’s appointment demonstrates our commitment to deliver optimum results for our investors, customers, and partners. Sarah’s international experience is world-class, given her career in highly regulated, quoted companies across multiple geographies. Her leadership will be vital in helping us efficiently manage significant expansion.”
Sarah graduated from the University of Edinburgh and Dauphine Université de Paris where she studied International Business with French. Sarah is an advocate of diversity in its many forms and was involved closely in supporting Spirit Energy’s initiatives to create a more inclusive culture across the oil and gas industry.
Sarah is based in Aberdeen where she lives with her husband and daughter. A fluent French speaker, she is also very interested in music and plays golf.
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Notes to editors:
For more information: please contact Kate Forster or Georgia Lea, IGS, on either kate@intelligentgrowthsolutions.com / +44 7787 534 999 or georgia@intelligentgrowthsolutions.com / +44 7897 539 954.
About Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS):
Founded in 2013, IGS brought together decades of farming and engineering experience to create an agritech business with a vision to revolutionise the indoor growing market. Its commitment to innovation has continued apace and it has evolved the applications of its technology beyond indoor agriculture to create solutions for a wide variety of farming applications which enhance life for plants and people alike.
IGS launched its first vertical farm crop research centre in August 2018.
For more information visit www.intelligentgrowthsolutions.com or connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
10 Ways Square Roots’ Farm-Tech Platform Empowers The Next Generation of Farmers
Square Roots’ scalable “farmer-first” platform brings fresh, healthy food to urban areas all year-round, while simultaneously training future generations of farmers to maintain sustainability in the future.
Square Roots is building a distributed network of indoor, modular farms, farmed by a new generation of farmers, to grow local food for people in cities all over the world. Here’s why it’s working.
Square Roots Super Farms are scalable, resilient and smart, and can be built fast. (Image: Via Chicago Architects + Diseñadores)
Square Roots’ scalable “farmer-first” platform brings fresh, healthy food to urban areas year-round, while simultaneously training future generations of farmers. With production farms in Brooklyn, New York, and Grand Rapids, Michigan (with more to come in 2020!), Square Roots has a mission to bring local, real food to people in cities across the world while empowering the next generation of leaders in urban farming.
Whether we’re in the farms tweaking CO2 levels, or in a board meeting plotting a pathway for what the company looks like in 2050, every decision we make is guided to help us achieve our mission faster, smarter, and with as much impact as possible.
Choices we’ve made around our technology platform are a good illustration of that. Our platform needs to bring fresh, healthy food to urban areas year-round, consistently, sustainability, and on any continent in the world. At the same time, it must also be a welcoming environment, conducive to training future generations of farmers to be productive, fast.
Central to our platform is the decision we made very early in the company’s life to build a distributed network of modular Climate Containers, as opposed to following the plant factory template.
Inside a Square Roots Climate Container, data-empowered farmers work with optimum growing conditions, all year round.
There are a lot of smart people in this industry, many with different visions for the optimum architecture and model for indoor farming (e.g. plant factories). But all working hard to bring better food to market — which, given our wider vision to bring real food to everyone, is wonderful to see. The more of us working on the real food revolution the better — and we want all of these systems to flourish. But here are 10 reasons why we think container farming rocks:
1. Speed to Market
Today we can enter a new market and open a Square Roots “Super Farm” — with 25 Climate Containers, cold storage, biosecurity infrastructure, and everything else you need to run a food-safe farm at scale — in less than three months, like we did in partnership with Gordon Food Service last Fall. That time period is only coming down. In comparison, building a plant factory can cost tens of millions of dollars, as well as take years to construct. We want to get real food to more people, and fast!
2. Easy to Scale
To meet increasing market demand, we simply add Climate Containers to any existing deployment. This means just-in-time capital deployment, and also just-in-time technology deployment. This is really important in an industry where the technology is improving fast. You don’t want to spend years and millions to open a big farm full of old tech that immediately needs a refresh.
3. Climate Control
I was an early investor in Chicago’s Farmed Here, one of the first and largest plant factories in the US. There, I saw first-hand how much the team struggled to control the climate in a building that size. Plants don’t like it when you get it wrong. And neither do landlords — the humidity can wreak havoc with the underlying infrastructure. In our programmable Climate Containers, each one built inside a 320 square foot shipping container, optimum conditions for a variety of crops can easily be maintained. The perfect climate for each variety can be seamlessly replicated — in any market — to ensure consistent quality every time, at every harvest.
Alyssa Patton, Square Roots Next-Gen Farmer, harvesting fresh, local basil inside a Climate Container in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
4. Diversity of Products
Multiple containers on our Super Farms allow for multiple climates, which lets us grow multiple crops at the same time to satisfy local market demands. For example, basil requires a completely different climate than chives to grow well, so it’s practically impossible to grow these two products together in a way that tastes good if you have a giant farm with one mono climate. The ability to grow multiple quality SKUs is particularly important in the retail market, where product variety is key to getting shelf real estate. Having multiple climates also means we can tackle many niches in any local market (e.g. using one container on a Super Farm to grow something exotic like Shiso or Mustard Greens), giving us a lot of business flexibility while keeping things interesting for our teams of farmers.
5. Sustainable Systems
As with most hydroponic growers, Square Roots uses zero pesticides, and 90% less water than outdoor farms. We can also be clever about energy usage. For example, we make it “daytime” in the farm by turning on our grow lights overnight when there is excess energy in the grid, and the cost per kilowatt-hour is lower. However, if for some reason we need to be in the farms during “daytime,” we can put a Climate Container into “harvest mode” — which dims the lights, and configures the climate to be optimum conditions for people at work — before seamlessly switching back to plant growing mode once we’re done.
6. Location
Our modular architecture means we can be very creative in repurposing existing city infrastructure when we look for locations to build a farm. We can pop up on an empty parking lot like we did in Brooklyn, New York, or build a campus on the headquarters of a major distribution company like we did with Gordon Food Service, or even build into a new development. This flexibility means we can build our Super Farms literally in the same zip code as the end consumer. This means fresher and tastier products for the customer, fewer food miles (most industrial food is shipped in from the other side of the world!), and less food waste. It also helps to get consumers more connected to their food and the people who grow it — they can simply jump on a subway or in their car, and come visit one of our farms!
7. Food Safety and System Resilience
All indoor farms need to be prepared for bad things to happen. While there is way less risk in a controlled environment versus an outdoor farm, it’s inevitable that you will get some sort of pest outbreak, powdery mildew, or some other issue at some point while you’re managing a complex ecosystem full of living, breathing plants. If that ever should happen in one of our Climate Containers, we can quickly shut it down and reboot that single node while the rest of the network keeps going strong. I’ve seen this happen in a plant factory, with one big mono climate, and you lose all your crops.
8. Faster Learning
Our farms are cloud-connected, and we collect millions of data points that we analyze to determine how changes in certain environmental parameters can impact factors like yield, taste, and texture of the final product. More climates in more containers means more feedback loops, which means faster learning. To systematize this learning, we’ve built The Square Roots Farmer Toolbelt — a software which is now the OS for the whole company as we all learn faster together.
9. The Network Gets Smarter as it Scales
Square Roots’ cloud-connected farms and data-empowered farmers learn from each other, enabling us to replicate success from one location to another, seamlessly. Working with Gordon Food Service to build farms across their network of distribution centers and retail stores brings us closer to the vision of a distributed network of indoor farms, bringing local, real food to people in cities across the world—while empowering thousands of next-gen leaders in urban farming through our unique training program.
10. Sense of Responsibility
Perhaps this is unique to Square Roots and our Next-Gen Farmer Training Program, but because we grow in modular Climate Containers, we’re able to give all our young farmers a personalized understanding of their individual impact on the overall business. The Square Roots Farmer Toolbelt provides day-to-day instructions on a per-farmer and per-crop basis, as well as a means for data capture, and real time analysis of both plant health and business metrics. All this information is accessible from the tablets that everyone on our farm team carries everyday. This system also ensures that we track every aspect of production — who does what, when, and how, from seed to sales. This is a goldmine of data, that not only helps us improve operations, but also implicitly provides traceability. In December 2018, we started exposing this data to consumers in the form of our Transparency Timeline. On every package of Square Roots produce, you can simply scan a QR code and get a complete story of where your food comes from — seed to shelf.
Simply scan the QR code on every Square Roots package to see where your food comes from.
Our Super Farm platform is exciting in terms of scalability, resilience, and efficiency, and it’s a really wonderful environment for our farmers to farm in. For urban consumers it means local farmers growing your food with love — which is why it tastes absolutely delicious. And technology enables us to grow a ton of food in a very small area, in ways that make a lot of business sense too. It’s a classic example of “doing well by doing good”.
It has been an exciting journey to our Super Farm platform. When we launched Square Roots back in 2016, we were very focused on figuring out the Farmer Training Program model — as we knew that farmers bring love to the food, the program would create enormous impact over time, and it would also be a long term engine of growth. So we partnered with a number of 3rd parties who could provide parts of the growing system for us, while we got the training program right. (In many ways, that was like Tesla sourcing our chassis from Lotus for the first Roadster). After that initial phase, and finding out what the urban farming world needs — i.e. higher quality yields with much lower costs to drive scalable unit economics, and ultra-high standards of biosecurity to support operations that are first class in food safety—we have developed our own technology specifically tailored to our model. This enables us to grow local food at incredible scale in ways that make sense for people, planet, and profits.
Our partnership with Gordon Food Service was announced at the end of March 2019, and our first co-located farm opened just six months later in Grand Rapids, Michigan — marking our next step of bringing local food to people in cities all across North America while training thousands of future farmers. Which, in a neat and circular way, brings us right back to the mission statement we started this post with.
Of course, we still have lots of work to do and we have a lot of exciting announcements coming this year as we grow! And, we’re always looking to talk with great people — from hardware and software engineers to farmers and plant scientists. So feel free to check our website and get in touch.
This article was originally published on the Indoor Ag-Con blog by Kimbal Musk on March 4, 2020.
Published by Dani Kliegerman for iGrow News
SANANBIO ARK, The Mobile Farm For All Climates That Supplies Communities With Fresh Local Food
3,300-4,400 lbs of cucumbers, 7,700 lbs of arugula, or 8,000 lbs of lettuce. These are the proven annual yields that we're confident to announce, said Zhan Zhuo, co-founder, and CEO of SANANBIO, We 'produce' turnkey farms and this one is mobile
November 21, 2020
PRN
XIAMEN: SANANBIO, a leading vertical farming solution provider announces the availability of its climate-controlled mobile farm for growers globally.
3,300-4,400 lbs of cucumbers, 7,700 lbs of arugula, or 8,000 lbs of lettuce. These are the proven annual yields that we're confident to announce, said Zhan Zhuo, co-founder, and CEO of SANANBIO, We 'produce' turnkey farms and this one is mobile. It adapts to any climate thanks to its thermal insulation system with a thermal conductivity below 0.024w/(m·K). One of the mobile farms operated as usual in the coldness of -40 degrees Fahrenheit in northern China, sustaining local communities with local produces at a reduced carbon footprint.
It is shocking to find that our food travels 1,500 miles on average before reaching our plate. The CO2 generated, and the nutrients lost during transportation, can't be good for the planet or human beings. That's why local food is advocated. The ready-to-use farm is the solution we offer to regions where the environment is too harsh to support stable agricultural production, said Zhan.
To streamline the farming experience, the designer simplifies the start-up procedures to a single plug-in motion power it up through a connector on the exterior and then even hydroponic beginners are set to grow. Moreover, growers can monitor and control farm metrics simply by moving fingertips on their phone.
By simplifying modern agriculture, we offer more farming opportunities for kids and urban dwellers. We have a mobile farm deployed in a Malaysian suburb where kids from the neighborhood frequent the farm for the hands-on hydroponic experience. It's a perfect bonding time when families go there to pick their own salad ingredients. As a Photobiotech company, we're nurturing a new generation of growers, said Zhan.
For more info about the mobile farm, please visit www.sananbio.com/ark.
Providence's Art-Deco Superman Building Reimagined as Vertical Farm And Senior Housing
The art-deco building was built in 1928 by Walker & Gillette and George Frederick Hall as the Industrial Trust Building. It has been vacant for almost eight years and is listed by the Providence Preservation Society (PPS) as an endangered property. Shreya Anand has suggested converting the structure into a vertical urban farm that uses hydroponic technology
Seven graduate students studying adaptive reuse at RISD have reimagined uses for the art-deco Superman Building in Providence, Rhode Island.
The art-deco building was built in 1928 by Walker & Gillette and George Frederick Hall as the Industrial Trust Building. It has been vacant for almost eight years and is listed by the Providence Preservation Society (PPS) as an endangered property.
Its visual similarity to the Daily Planet office building in the DC comics series influenced its nickname as the Superman Building.
Saving Superman, the spring studio course for graduate students, was led by the Interior Architecture department head Liliane Wong and faculty members Elizabeth Debs and Jonathan Bell at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
Students worked with the PPS and the city planning office to each propose their own design for the interiors of the vacant structure. Each of the proposals was presented virtually on 22 May and can be viewed online. Read on for the seven designs:
The Second Act by Ankit Mandawewala
Ankit Mandawewala's proposal involves converting the building into several theatre and performance spaces. A jazz bar occupies the basement level and terraces would be situated on the higher floors.
Large LED screens cover a portion of the steel-framed structure to create a drive-in theatre on the city streets below.
Super Farmer by Shreya Anand
Shreya Anand has suggested converting the structure into a vertical urban farm that uses hydroponic technology. In the design, the walls and platforms of the 20 storey atrium are filled with plants that could provide food for local restaurants.
The top floor of the building is occupied by several dining options promoting a farm to table scheme.
Synaptic City by Michele Katora
Synaptic City is a biotech and science innovation centre outfitted with laboratories. They can be adapted to research a number of technology-related projects such as wind turbine production, interstellar satellites, artificial intelligence or medicine.
Beyond Years by Rashmi Ravishankar
Beyond Years is senior housing with recreational rooms, housing and healthcare resources. The coronavirus outbreak prompted Rashmi Ravishankar to research air quality and its relationship to virus transmission.
Garden spaces inside the building are included as part of the scheme to purify the air and also serve as a therapeutic resource for the residents.
Super Normal by Yiren Mao
Yiren Mao has imagined what city living could be like following the pandemic. It separates the building into three towers that offer, residential units, offices, retail stores and other community facilities such as a library and outdoor dog park.
The middle portion of the building would house communal resources such as laundry and recreation space, with a co-working tower and living quarters in the adjacent towers. Restaurants, stores and a dog walking trail would occupy the building's lower levels.
Expedition Superman by Nameera Najib
Najib has designed a corporate headquarters for international toy company Hasbro, which is located in Providence.
Features of the colourful interiors include an exploratorium with a domed planetarium, play scapes with twisted slides and other interactive gadgetry that promotes play.
Vertical Thrills by Hongjia Zhou
Vertical Thrills transforms the historic building into an amusement park and tourist destination that could earn revenue. It involves opening the space up to install equipment for indoor skydiving, bungee jumping, and a massive climbing wall.
In her drawings, Hongjia Zhou has mimicked the style of the DC Superman comic strips in an homage to the building and its nickname.
Images courtesy Rhode Island School of Design.
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