Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
CombaGroup SA Reveals Rebrand With New Name, Logo, and Products
Last year, the company realized it was time to leverage its unique position in the field of mobile aeroponic growing solutions. This year, they've rebranded to solidify their stance, offering, and direction within the industry
Molondin, Switzerland – 21 October 2020 : CombaGroup SA announced today the company's complete rebranding and launch of its new website.
Last year, the company realized it was time to leverage its unique position in the field of mobile aeroponic growing solutions. This year, they've rebranded to solidify their stance, offering, and direction within the industry.
The new name, CleanGreens, is synonymous with powering clean, sustainable solutions in the agrotech space. It also reflects the company's mission to represent more directly what they are bringing to the table: fresh, healthy, premium quality yields of their customers’ favorite crops.
The rebranding is a response to accelerated company growth and a renewal of its corporate vision, subtly captured by its new logo with the notion of interaction and connectedness. These are core to the capabilities of scalable mobile aeroponic technology platforms that are a priority for both CleanGreens and its clients and partners.
With six years of R&D and technology breakthroughs in mobile irrigation and agronomy expertise, CleanGreens is proud to offer CleanGreens Pro, a system designed to be as simple as A-B-C, with immediate support and maintenance as well as a technical hotline available in addition to the built-in resources.
As a platform, CleanGreens is expanding to welcome new communities of users and has gone even further in solidifying its global position going forward. It has released new product packages and features that allow its clients to build, manage, and deploy custom applications quickly with its own intuitive, integrated, cloud-based operating application, GURU by CleanGreens. The platform gives clients the ability to grow exactly what they want with the support they require whenever they need it.
Based on the experiences and feedback from CleanGreens’ agronomist team and customers, this new app assists in key tasks like sowing, harvesting, and preventive maintenance and also features built-in reminders, alerts, and real-time records. It’s like having your own personal CleanGreens agro-expert assistant at your fingertips.
Currently, there are seven cultivation lines in operation in three locations: Molondin and Geneva in Switzerland, and Châteauneuf-sur-Loire in France. More are in the pipeline for the future. The new improvements have allowed CleanGreens to meet elevated customer demands for more of its innovative products and technologies.
"Our complete solution is different from any system in the market and our re-branding is largely driven by our effort to reflect this for our products, mission, vision, and of course, our customers and consumers,” says Serge Gander, CEO.
He adds: ”We've taken a clean, modern approach to the name, the website's design and the user experience in our new look and rebrand. We purposefully set out to challenge the status quo in all aspects of our business and this redesign reflects that."
Please visit the revamped website www.cleangreens.ch to explore the new website and learn more about the products and services offered.
About CleanGreens
CleanGreens is a Swiss agro-technology company that provides farmers and industrialists with innovative mobile aeroponic farming solutions for growing fresh, environmentally-friendly, nutrient-rich vegetables. A certified B Corp company CleanGreens’ patented technology significantly reduces water consumption and contamination risks while offering maximum productivity per square meter and minimizing environmental impact. Automated irrigation and mechanized spacing system produce clean, quality, pesticide-free salads, aromatic herbs, and medicinal plants all year round, thus providing consumers with healthy, responsible products.
For more information
+41 21 545 99 25
Sustainable Living: Hydroponic Mobile Farms To Let Anyone Grow Vegetables In Hong Kong, Slashing Carbon Footprints
Shops, restaurants, schools, and households could grow their own fresh produce, reducing need for imports, if mobile farming trial is successful. Technology is the latest brainchild of team of University of Hong Kong MBAs behind urban farm that supplies restaurants vegetables and herbs grown without soil
Shops, restaurants, schools, and households could grow their own fresh produce, reducing need for imports, if mobile farming trial is successful
Technology is the latest brainchild of team of University of Hong Kong MBAs behind urban farm that supplies restaurants vegetables and herbs grown without soil
13 Aug, 2019
Farmacy grows vegetables and herbs hydroponically in Causeway Bay, and is trialling mobile farms. Co-founder Raymond Mak talks about cutting Hong Kong’s carbon footprint and delivering fresh produce. Photo: Jonathan Wong
As a social movement gathers pace on the city streets this summer, there’s another growing revolution – a green movement.
This one is all about groundbreaking farming technology that cuts lengthy supply chains to allow easy access to fresh produce rich in nutrients and bursting with flavour.
Farmacy (farmacyhk.com), an urban farming technology company launched in January 2018, has been offering herbs, micro greens, and edible flowers to restaurants, hotels and home cooks. It will take things to the next level in a couple of weeks with the launch of its first “mobile farm”.
“That’s a farm that is so mobile it can be stored in your home, restaurant, school or supermarket. In the future, supermarkets won’t need to import vegetables, you can grow the vegetables fresh – lettuce, pak choi, choi sum, whatever,” says Raymond Mak, Farmacy’s CEO and co-founder.
Farmacy grows vegetables and herbs hydroponically. Photo: Jonathan Wong
Using hydroponic technology, the greens will grow in-store so that consumers know exactly where their food is coming from – they can actually see their vegetables as they grow. The pilot mobile farm will be launched in mid-August at the organic convenience store JustGreen in Sai Kung.
“They want to first roll it out at the Sai Kung store because there’s more room and they have a good relationship with clients who are open to trying new things and are more demanding about sustainability and freshness,” says Mak.
Customers will be able to order vegetables that can be harvested and delivered within minutes or hours, instead of the usual four-day minimum for imported goods. Photo: Jonathan Wong
We are in the firm’s hydroponics farm in Fashion Walk, Causeway Bay, a 200 sq ft space with two glass walls that allow the curious a peek at the herbs, micro greens, and edible flowers growing in their shallow blue tubs. There’s no air-conditioning in here – the plants like it warm – and just a fan to cool things down a bit if necessary. At 11am it’s time to turn on the lights and “wake up” the greens. “They need eight hours sleep, just like humans,” says Mak.
Hydroponic basically refers to the way that the plants absorb nutrients, which is through water instead of soil. Farmacy uses organic nutrients bought from the United States which has US Federal Drug Administration approval, and adds it to water. An advantage of indoor farming is that it’s very “clean” – there are none of the pesky insects and pests you get with soil and outdoors – and it also saves water.
“Compared with soil-based farming, where a lot of water is lost, goes underground, hydroponic farming saves 90 per cent more water,” says Mak.
Tastes like chicken? Why maggots might be the future of food
Hong Kong imports an astounding 98.3 per cent of its vegetables, with 70 per cent of the imports coming from China and 28 per cent flown in from around the world. All the emissions involved in getting our greens into Hong Kong is a massive black mark in terms of sustainability – and it’s also bad for our health. As soon as produce is harvested, the roots stop supplying water to the leaves and stem and the plant starts leaking goodness, with much of the nutrition going as the plant’s water evaporates.
“University of California studies show that vegetables can lose 15 to 55 per cent of vitamin C within a week and some spinach can lose 90 per cent of vitamin C within the first 24 hours after harvest,” says Mak, one of five University of Hong Kong MBA graduates who teamed up to found Farmacy.
The beauty of a mobile farm is the ability to buy your greens with the roots still intact, take the produce home and cut it up and cook it while it’s still super fresh and packed with goodness.
Raymond Mak co-founded Farmacy with four other HKU MBA graduates. Photo: Jonathan Wong
He notes the irony of consumers forking out high prices at high-end supermarkets for organic goods from Italy and France when the long travel time seriously affects its nutritional value. The four days minimum it takes to get from farm to supermarket represents a huge loss of nutrients. Even produce from Yunnan in southwest China – where much of Hong Kong’s vegetables are grown – takes one to two days to reach Hong Kong, Mak says.
The longer it takes to transport produce, the more flavour it loses. Mak proposes an impromptu tasting session.
First, we try a purple flower, oxalis, which is super sour, then a yellow cucumber flower, followed by lime basil, and a nasturtium (known as Empress of India) which knocks our socks off with a powerful wasabi hit. Harvested just moments before we ingested them, the flavours are full of zing, so it’s easy to understand why Michelin-starred chefs want to get their hands on them. French restaurant Le Salon de Thé de Joël Robuchon was an early adopter.
University of California studies show that vegetables can lose 15 to 55 per cent of vitamin C within a week and some spinach can lose 90 per cent of vitamin C within the first 24 hours after harvestRaymond Mak, Farmacy’s CEO and co-founder
But Farmacy isn’t about just catering to celebrity chefs – it’s got a bigger mission in mind.
“We don’t want this to be a small, niche thing, we want it to be accessible to the public, to all citizens, we want to make it a movement,” says Mak.
The movement is taking hold elsewhere. In Germany, the Berlin-based Infarm (infarm.com), founded in 2013 by two brothers, has partnered with 25 major food retailers and deployed more than 200 in-store farms, and is harvesting 150,000-plus plants monthly. Farmshelf (farmshelf.com), started by Andrew Shearer in a San Francisco garage in 2015, is now leading the urban farming pack in the US.
Closer to home, the idea has taken root in Singapore. Earlier this year the city state announced its intention to have all the island state’s needs home-grown by 2030, including vegetables cultivated in climate-controlled greenhouses under special LED lighting to maximise yields.
“Singapore has quite aggressive targets. Hong Kong needs to catch up and we want to play a role in it,” says Mak.
The Farmacy team – nine staff, including the five founders – have been using the Causeway Bay operation for research and development and a base in Cyberport to develop the mobile farm technology. Beyond the hydroponic technology, Mak says the team is developing even more sustainable and efficient farming technology, but they’ve taken it slow the first year to develop their green thumbs.
“You have to understand the plants before moving to the technology, or else it has no soul,” he says.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: green movement to turn city slickers into farmers
Sustainable Living Health and wellness Veganism Food and agriculture Singapore Environment