Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
Urban Crop Solutions Launches New "Modulex Plant Factory" on Sept. 9th, 2020
Launch Webinar hosted by Henry Gordon-Smith, CEO of Agritecture, on Sept 9th, 2020 (9 am EDT, 3 pm CEST, 9 pm SGT - 45 minutes)
Register And Get A Sneak Preview on The
New www.urbancropsolutions.com Website
Launch Webinar hosted by Henry Gordon-Smith, CEO of Agritecture,
on Sept 9th, 2020 (9 am EDT, 3 pm CEST, 9 pm SGT - 45 minutes)
Indoor Vertical Farming is a fast-emerging agriculture technology that provides compelling solutions to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals: waste less food and support local farmers (Goal 2), avoid wasting water (Goal 6), and provide decent work (Goal 8).
However, few early adopters are making a profit.
Urban Crop Solutions has worked tirelessly to find a sensible solution to the open issues many investors and growers still face today. The initial Capex or investment cost is high and creates the need for a scalable solution. The unique freshness, taste, and shelf life of the crops go to niche markets with ever-changing needs, which requires a Plant Factory to be extremely adaptable. Also, high labor costs push Indoor Farms to implement more automation and become more efficient.
Based on the experiences and feedback of the customers on the 1st generation products, a new generation Plant Factory was designed from the ground up. The company believes it developed a concept that ‘simply makes sense’.
The ModuleX, the “Sensible Plant Factory” is Scalable, Adaptable, and Efficient.
The ModuleX can be configured between 2 to 64 Grow Modules, which means that the Plant Factory is scalable. One Grow Module contains 86 m² (925 sq.ft) of growing surface, yielding about 6.000 kg/year (13.228 lbs/year) of fresh vegetables. Each separate module features an independent climate and nutrient system, allowing the mix of crops to be adaptable to customers’ needs.
The base price is an industry-low Capex of 1.800 EUR per m² growing surface ex-works (199 USD/sq.ft). The labor costs are reduced by the automated crop-to-person ‘BenchCarousel’. For example, the ModuleX-8 has 8 Grow Modules for a total of 688 m² (7.403 sq.ft). The base price is 1.238.400 EUR (approx. 1.47 mm USD) for an output of 44 ton/year of romaine lettuce (97.000 lbs/year). For mid-sized solutions under 5500 m² growing surface, this is probably the most efficient solution on the market today.
To help people in the long and confusing journey into indoor vertical farming, the company also initiates an end-to-end support program, with a free feasibility calculator, technical support, biological consulting, and contract research. Urban Crop Solutions also developed a Corona-proof support system for training, set-up, startup, and first harvest support of any ModuleX Grow Module, which all can now happen remotely.
Tom Debusschere, CEO of Urban Crop Solutions: “We’ve been listening closely to the feedback of our customers and we found improvements just about everywhere. But the breakthrough invention is the automated BenchCarousel. This new crop-to-person carousel brings any bench of your choice to you within 90 seconds. It also allows us to fit a growing surface of 86m² (925sq.ft) within a 40ft insulated freight container, which we believe is an industry record.
What you really pay for is growing surface, labor, and electricity, and the ModuleX Plant Factory offers a step-change improvement in each. We invite you to take a look at our new website, with the investment cost in full transparency, so you can quickly see which solution is the best fit for you.”
Urban Crop Solutions is an agtech pioneer in the fast-emerging world of ‘Indoor Vertical Farming’. Throughout years of research, 220+ ‘plant growth recipes’ were developed for efficient indoor growing. All drivers for healthy plant growth, such as optimal LED spectrum and intensity, nutrient mix, irrigation strategy, and climate settings are tested and validated daily in the company’s own Indoor Biology Research Center.
To date, Urban Crop Solutions has manufactured container Farms and a Plant Factory for clients throughout Europe, North America, and Asia. Urban Crop Solutions’ commercial farms are being operated for vegetables, herbs, and micro-greens for food retail, foodservice, and industrial applications. Research institutions operate the growing infrastructure of Urban Crop Solutions for scientific research on banana seedlings, flowers, hemp, and many more.
Visit www.urbancropsolutions.com for a full virtual tour.
For more information: www.urbancropsolutions.com
Brecht Stubbe, Sales Director brst@urbancropsolutions.com
Maarten Vandecruys, CTO mava@urbancropsolutions.com
Tom Debusschere, CEO tode@urbancropsolutions.com
European headquarters: Regional headquarters:
Grote Heerweg 67 800 Brickell Avenue, 1100 Suite
8791 Beveren-Leie (Waregem) Miami (FL 33131)
Belgium Florida
(+32) 56 96 03 06 +1 (727) 601 7158
Facebook: www.facebook.com/urbancropsolutions
Twitter: www.twitter.com/U_C_Solutions
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/urbancropsolutions
YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/c/UrbanCropSolutions
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urbancropsolutions/?hl=en
A Brief Insight Into Thailand’s Vertical Farming Sector
"There’s quite a big difference between Thailand and other Asian countries in terms of the advancements in vertical farming technology and business”, Siriwat Sakhonwasee says
by Dr. Siriwat Sakhonwasee
"There’s quite a big difference between Thailand and other Asian countries in terms of the advancements in vertical farming technology and business”, Siriwat Sakhonwasee says. After obtaining his Ph.D. on plant biology from the University of California Davis in 2009, Sakhonwasee is now a lecturer and researcher in the faculty of agricultural production at Maejo University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Sakhonwasee's university lab research on seed production of petunia under LED lights
Increase of interest
“When I started doing research on vertical farming about 10 years ago, people in Thailand thought that I was pursuing a useless hobby. However, in other Asian countries such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan, vertical farming was already a serious business concept. Today, vertical farming is becoming a new trend where a number of companies are interested to place their bet on. The concept of vertical farming in Thailand receives a lot of influence from Japanese technology. This is why most people use the word “Plant factory”, a jargon, originated from Japan to describe vertical farming.” Last month, Thailand’s Board of Investment (BOI) announced that it officially will support investments on Plant Factories by reducing the tax burden on businesses involved with this technology. Sakhonwasee continues: “I see this as a good sign for vertical farming in Thailand as the same thing happened in Japan a decade ago.
More demandIn terms of Thailand, now there are many more research projects regarding vertical farming than five years ago. “I sometimes have to review research proposals for funding agencies and I can easily tell that nowadays research projects, involving vertical farming concepts, are more frequently submitted”, Sakhonwasee notes. This means that researchers in Thailand will have more chances to explore the science behind the concept of vertical farming. He continues: “Hopefully, this will lead to the development of innovative techniques that are suitable for the country. From a global perspective, people are integrating much more sophisticated technology into vertical farming, such as IoT and AI. The concept is not just growing a plant on the shelves using artificial light anymore. It is about collecting the data and constantly improving the vertical farming system.”
Dr. Siriwat Sakhonwasee
“One thing I see as a clear improvement is the business model of vertical farming. More diverse business models are applied such as a decentralized model by Infarm, harvest on demand by Farmers Cut.” For Thailand, 3 prominent vertical farming startup companies also use a different business model to sell their produce, namely, Wangree Fresh which uses a subscription model to sell their vegetables, NoBitter which is using online channels to engage with its customers and LED Farm which uses a retail hypermarket channel to sell its produce through.
Current industry struggles“I think that making people understand the value of a vertical farming product, is a common problem for vertical farming worldwide. Recently, Irvin Fain founder of Bowery used the word “post-organic” to explain the value of their fresh produce. This is such a good way to describe produce from vertical farming that is pesticide-free and very clean so customers do not need to wash before eat.” Sakhonwasee adds: “My colleague recently spoke with Mr. Chingchai Konthansakul founder of LED Farm of Thailand. He has an interesting way of thinking regarding vertical farming produce. He explained that he will never compare vegetables from his vertical farm with traditional farming fresh produce. Instead, he shows off his fresh produce as a novel product. This helped LED Farm to design a proper marketing strategy for consumers who were always skeptical about the safety of fresh produce.”
Mr. Chingchai Konthansakul, founder of LED Farm
Future vision
“In Thailand, I believe that vertical farming will never completely replace traditional farming, in terms of feeding the population. We are blessed with great natural resources that are suitable for almost every aspect of agriculture. But, vertical farming might play a big role in the production of premium produce for high-end consumers. However, to achieve this concept a certification process must be established, like organic produce. I think we will see more diversity in the application of vertical farming systems such as speed breeding and production of medicinal substances from herbs or genetically modified plants.
In other Asian countries, vertical farming will probably play a more prominent role in terms of food production. For example, a small country like Singapore just set a 30 by 30 goal last year. This was done to support the local food production to meet 30% in demand of the Singaporean population by the year 2030. In this case, the cultivation area is a big issue and vertical farming is expected to play a significant role in Singaporean food production. Other examples are countries in the Middle East where the majority of land is desert and not arable. Again, vertical farming can overcome this limitation and could provide food security for these countries.”
For more information:
Dr. Siriwat Sakhonwasee, assistant professor
tongscpl@yahoo.com
Publication date: Wed 12 Aug 2020
Author: Rebekka Boekhout
© HortiDaily.com