Growfoam Welcomes New Chief Financial Officer

Growfoam, world leader in biodegradable foams for controlled environment agriculture, announced today that drs. Janet Koolman RA, a seasoned financial expert, has joined the company’s executive team as Chief Financial Officer.

July 1, 2021

Growfoam, the world leader in biodegradable foams for controlled environment agriculture, announced today that Drs. Janet Koolman RA, a seasoned financial expert, has joined the company’s executive team as Chief Financial Officer.

Koolman brings over 20 years of experience in management, accounting, and controlling. Before joining Growfoam, she worked in various roles at the Dutch Accell Group, most recently as Senior Holding Controller. Accell Group is a publicly owned company with a position on the EURONEXT Amsterdam Stock Market and is the European market leader in e-bikes. Their portfolio includes brands such as Koga, Raleigh, and Batavus. Koolman’s impact on the mobility sector is not to be underestimated. During her career at Accell, the company grew from a European player to a multinational with branches all over the world. Koolman and her team were instrumental in initiating the immense professionalization and growth of the Accell finance department.

“Koolman’s impressive background and career make her a great fit for her new role at Growfoam,” said Growfoam CEO Martin Tietema. “As well as her financial management expertise, she shares our mission and vision of making the world better for future generations, and enabling reliable and safe food production.”

Koolman’s hire follows Growfoam’s strong growth perspective since its market introduction at Greentech 2019. The company’s growth is fuelled by a financial injection from venture capitalists SHIFT Invest and Future Food Fund, alongside a global portfolio of CEA clients that has rapidly expanded over the last few months.

“I am excited to join the executive team at Growfoam,” said Koolman. “I am impressed by the team’s commitment to positively impacting the world by enabling their clients to grow greener, safer and faster, which is a core priority of the company. The time for making a big impact on food safety and quality is now. I am determined to contribute to that and, in my field of expertise, the difference between making an impact in mobility or food production is not as big as one might think. And I still commute to work by bike. Old habits die hard.”

Koolman’s hire is effective starting July 1st.

IGrow PreOwned 6/12/21 IGrow PreOwned 6/12/21

Growfoam Is Gearing Up For The Next Revolution In Controlled Environment Agriculture

The agricultural market stands on the verge of a true revolution and Growfoam is destined to pave the way for growers around the globe. Their mission? Enable growers to grow Greener, Safer and Faster

The agricultural market stands on the verge of a true revolution and Growfoam is destined to pave the way for growers around the globe. Their mission? Enable growers to grow Greener, Safer and Faster.

Rising demand for fresh & healthy vegetable crops.
With an increasing global population and rising global welfare, the fruit & vegetable market is expected to increase towards 260% in 2050, compared to current levels.

This rise in demand for fresh & healthy crops has resulted in a boom of investments towards greenhouse projects (e.g. in China and the US) and a steep rise in VC investments in AgTech Scale-ups. Such a swift market development offers the AgTech industry both a challenge, as well as an opportunity: we need to push ourselves in growing Greener, Safer and Faster.

Growfoam knows it is possible to sustainably feed a growing population. They contribute to this goal by continuously innovating their growing media and collaborate with growers around the world. This way Growfoam enables growers in cultivating their crops Greener, Safer and Faster.

Future-proof farms aim for de-risking the value chain
The horticultural industry continues to offer consumers fresh produce at increasing quality standards while maintaining efficient pricing. This trend will be further enabled by emerging technologies such as vertical farming, hydroponic cultivation, big data, and autonomous greenhouse cultivation. The next big leap for farms across the globe will be to de-risk the entire fruit & vegetable value chain.

Vertical Farms and other Controlled Environment Agriculture technologies are already enabling this by growing their produce locally near end-consumers while utilizing stable and predictable year-round cultivation methods. And it doesn’t stop at just predictable year-round cultivation, improved technologies such as automation and completely clean starting materials (e.g. clean Growfoam growing media) enable growers to further de-risk the value chain by offering traceable, pathogen-free and thus fully safe healthy greens.

These de-risked and highly efficient future-proof farms offer added value for the entire value chain by producing safer produce.

Reducing operational costs (OPEX) is key to farm success
The last major hurdle for vertical farms and hydroponic cultivation techniques is to increase production efficiency and reduce OPEX.

Although many important breakthroughs (e.g. lowered CAPEX/m2 farm, optimized growing methods, increased automation) have been realized in overcoming this hurdle, there is still much to win. One major enabler in reducing OPEX is the correct choice in growing media: most of the growing media available on the market today are less suited for vertical farms and hydroponic cultivation techniques.

Loose-fill growing media offer significant challenges in automation, increasing labor costs as well as maintenance costs. Growing media consisting of organic components such as peat and coir offer significant safety challenges by introducing potential pathogens into the farm and are destined to be banned completely over time. They increase risks of crop failure due to high variation in batch-to-batch consistency and increase logistical risk due to limited resource availability due to swift expansion of the horticulture industry.

Non-degradable growing media increase waste disposal costs when disposing of the growing media after crop cultivation. These waste disposal costs can be easily reduced and sometimes even be avoided by utilizing biodegradable alternatives such as Growfoam..

New website and brand identity

Today Growfoam unveiled its new brand identity. This premiere marks the start of a new era for Growfoam, to match the ambitious and innovative nature of the Growfoam products and signifying the evolution of the company from an innovative startup to an exponentially growing scale-up. Growfoam has created a cross-platform brand experience that is future-proof and authentic, focusing on their main client groups; vertical- and hydroponic farmers.

‘The new Growfoam brand design marks the start of great things to come,’ says Martin Tietema, CEO and one of the founding partners of Growfoam. ‘By formulating new content, sharing knowledge and with out-of-the-box solutions for growers all over the world, Growfoam is enabling a fast transformation towards a future with full circular possibilities for every vertical- or hydroponic farm. Now is the right time to make the new attitude of our brand visible to the outside world.’

The brand promise ‘grow greener, grow safer, grow faster’ can be seen and experienced in the design and production of the Growfoam products, in customer contacts, and the brand presentation as a whole.

Growfoams Chief Commercial Officer, Niels Steenvoorden, explains: ‘We have created a new global brand experience on all channels and across all touchpoints.. Our aim is to truly connect with our clients, grow with them, share knowledge and enable them to do what they do best; grow great crops.’ ‘We invite growers to contact us and join us on our journey to establishing the perfect grow zone for their crops. Enabling them in growing Greener, Safer and Faster.’

The new visual brand language will be very different from that presented by Growfoam to date. It will be bolder, more colorful and the focus will be on real-life situations and actual challenges of the controlled environment farmers.

An abstract representation of the foam bubbles they produce is incorporated in their new logo. The bold and bright colors they use are a direct link to both the RGB lights in vertical farms as well as the water used in hydroponic farms.

The strategic foundations for the new brand identity were laid by a joint team of Foamplant and JEEN, a marketing agency in Agri and food, over the last few months.