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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Vertical Farming

Thrive Containers Officially Launches Its Controlled Environment Farming System

St. Petersburg, Florida-based Thrive Containers officially launched operations this week for its controlled-environment farming technology, a hardware-software system for growing produce out of shipping containers. The company’s first model, dubbed the Ohio Farm Container Model, is built for growing leafy greens, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

Like other companies in the indoor ag space, Thrive builds its farms inside 40-foot-long shipping containers and grows plants vertically. Thrive uses the Flood and Drain hydroponic growing method for plants, which is exactly as it sounds. Plant roots are periodically “flooded” with nutrient-enriched water, which saturates the growth medium in which the plants sit. The nutrient solution is then drained, and the process is repeated, usually multiple times a day. 

Artemis’ (née Agrylist) provides the software to control those water cycles as well as the light “recipes” for the plants. Via a smartphone interface, growers can create planting schedules, control the climate inside the containers, track crop health, and detect food-safety issues.

Thrive is owned by Brick Street Farms, a company that recently partnered with Publix brand Greenwise to bring its container farms to grocery stores in Florida. Thrive hasn’t yet said if it plans to follow in its parent company’s steps and focus on grocery. Other potential use cases include bringing farms to schools, as Freight Farms has done, and locating them at food distribution centers, as Square Roots and Gordon Food Service have.

Thrive’s farms can currently grow a variety of lettuces and yield between about 5,000 and 12,000 pounds of greens annually, depending on the crop. Pricing for the Ohio starts at $127,500. For an additional cost, growers can add extra equipment like containers for cold storage and packing. Future models, including those designed to grow micro greens and cannabis, are listed on the company’s website, though specific release dates are yet to be revealed.

BrightFarms Raised $100M Series E for its Indoor Farms

BrightFarms has raised a $100 million Series E round of funding for its indoor farms, Food Navigator reported yesterday. The round was led by Cox Enterprises, with participation from Catalyst Investors, and brings the total amount raised by BrightFarms to nearly $213 million.

BrightFarms grows leafy greens in its network of indoor farms across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illiniois, and Virginia with new facilities opening up in North Carolina and Texas. According to the company’s website, the BrightFarms’ pitch is that its greens are more tender because they are grown hydroponically and don’t need to “struggle” in harsh outdoor conditions. Additionally, after harvest and prep, they are shipped to stores just hours away, rather than cross-country.

According to Food Navigator, BrightFarms’ greens are sold in more than 2,000 locations and through stores from Ahold Delhaize, Walmart and Kroger. BrightFarms expects to be in more than 15,000 stores by 2025.

Indoor farming has certainly seen a lot of green for its greens, as players in the space have raised a lot of money. AppHarvest, which is building a mega-greenhouse in Kentucky, has raised $120 million. Plenty has raised $541 million, which includes investment and a partnership with berry producer, Driscoll’s. And InFarm, which puts indoor farms in grocery stores, has raised $304 million.

BrightFarms says its approach to growing greens is pesticide free, uses 80 percent less water than land-based farming, 90 percent less land, 95 percent less shipping fuel, all while yielding 10x more leafy greens than conventional farming.

We are definitely in the early stages of indoor farming and we still need to see how all this plays out, but judging just from the frothy market, the future for indoor farms looks bright.

SKS 2020: Why Singapore Is Fast-Becoming Food Tech’s New Superpower

That Singapore is a fast-rising superpower in food tech is something that’s become apparent over the last several months. And yesterday, during a SKS 2020 panel on the Asian food tech landscape, the city-state came up in conversation again as an enormously important location to watch when it comes to food innovation and investment.

“If I had to place my bet I would place it on Singapore,” said Michal Klar, an angel investor who also writes the Future Food Now newsletter. Joining him on the panel were Winnie Leung of Bits x Bites and Spoon Publisher Mike Wolf, and together, the group unpacked some of the reasons why so much food tech innovation is coming out of Singapore right now.

Arguably the biggest driver is that, at the moment, Singapore imports 90 percent of its food. That’s a precarious position to be in during the best of times, never mind during a pandemic that’s disrupted the global food supply chain. In response, the Singapore government launched a $21 million grant fund this year as part of its 30×30 initiative, which aims to have 30 percent of Singapore’s food produced locally by 2030. 

At the same time, that reliance on imports for the majority of its foods may actually help Singapore innovate on food tech faster for the short term. Since so much of the city-state’s food comes from outside its own borders, Singapore lacks some of the constraints other countries face when it comes to getting pushback by established players.

Alternative protein is a good example. Here in the U.S., both plant- and cell-based meat companies must go toe-to-toe with Big Meat producers and lobbyists over labeling of their products, shelf placement, and other issues. By contrast, Klar suggested that because Singapore’s meat supply is imported there’s nobody to push back on new developments and regulations happening in the city-state around alternative forms of meat. That, Klar reasoned, is one of the reasons Singapore is home to Asia’s best-funded cell-base meat startup, Shiok Meats, as well as a number of other up and coming players.  

Indoor agriculture/vertical farming is another area that could potentially thrive because of a lack of existing incumbents. Last year, local farms produced just 14 percent of leafy vegetables consumed by Singaporeans, so there’s little in the way of traditional agriculture to disrupt. At SKS, Leung noted that Singapore’s “highly urbanized” environment makes it an ideal setting for high-tech innovations in indoor farming. We’ve seen this in recent months with companies like SinGrow, which is growing a proprietary breed of strawberries in its vertical farm, and ag tech accelerators like GROW. Leung also flagged aquaculture as a sector to watch in Singapore.

Both Klar and Leung also pointed to Singapore’s regulatory environment as a reason for the city-states speedy growth in food tech innovation. There is only one agency in Singapore that regulates foods, said Klar. In other words, when companies prepare for the phase in which they must get government approval for their products, there’s no doubt or confusion as to who they must go to. This could speed up the process of regulatory approval, which in turn would mean a faster time to market for many companies. 

The above factors are just a smattering of reasons for Singapore food tech’s continued growth, and over the next several months we will continue to see new advances in ag tech, alt protein, packaging, and other areas of the food supply chain emerge.

Plenty Raises $140M to Expand Its Vertical Farming Operations

Vertical farming startup Plenty announced today it has raised a $140 million Series D round led by Softbank’s Vision Fund 1. The round also included participation from berry producer Driscoll’s, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. The investment brings Plenty’s total funding to date to $541 million.

The funding announcement comes mere days after Plenty announced a partnership with Driscoll’s to grow strawberries inside Plenty vertical farms. Part of this new investment will go towards that partnership, as well as Plenty’s collaboration with grocery retailer Albertsons and development on the company’s new farm in Compton, California.

Both the Driscoll’s and Albertsons partnerships mean Plenty’s produce will be available in more locations, especially California, where the company is headquartered. The Albertsons partnership, announced in August of this year, will put plenty greens in 431 of the retailer’s California stores. For the Driscoll’s partnership, Plenty will use its Laramie, Wyoming facility to grow the berry producer’s proprietary strawberry breed.

Plenty’s news follows other recent developments in the vertical/indoor farming sector that span commercial-scale farms, at-home gardens, and initiatives in the grocery store itself. Kalera, another massive vertical farming operation, announced Denver as the next city for its rapid expansion westward. Rise Gardens this week announced an investment from the Amazon Alexa Fund for its in-home hydroponic grow system, and last month, In-Farm raised $170 million to expand its network of vertical farming pods across more grocery stores. 

Less than one year ago, the vertical farming sector was expanding, but a lot of questions remained around the scalability of the concept and how appealing it could be to investors. The nearly constant stream of funding and product announcements in 2020 has sped up that expansion. Part of this is due to, yep, you guessed it, the pandemic. Disruptions in the food supply chain due to COVID-19 have consumers more interested than ever in where their food comes from, and having it grown closer to home is an increasingly attractive option. 

Amazon’s Alexa Fund Invests in At-Home Vertical Farming Company Rise Gardens

Rise Gardens announced today it has received an investment from the Amazon Alexa Fund that builds upon a $2.6M seed round Rise closed in May. The amount invested by the Amazon Alexa Fund was not disclosed.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the deal is both a collaboration and a cash investment that will “fuel new products, accessories and further R+D” for Rise Gardens.

The Chicago-based Rise is best known for its standalone console (roughly the size of a standard bookcase) that contains a hydroponic grow system for consumers at home. The system does most of the hard work—calculating nutrition and pH levels, knowing when and how much to water the plants—for the user, whom it notifies via a corresponding app.

Rise’s system is also modular, so it can be added to or subtracted from over time depending on how many greens your household consumes each week. Users can also grow beets and tomatoes in addition to leafy greens and herbs.

Rise raised $2.6 million in seed funding earlier this year; Amazon’s new investment is an extension of this seed funding, according to today’s press release.

Amazon’s investment in Rise sounds promising, not just for the company but for the entire vertical farming sector. To start, Rise CEO and founder Hank Adams hinted today at Alexa functionality for the Rise system: “Collaborating with the Alexa Fund will better enable us to integrate our smart, connected garden with Alexa, making indoor gardening even easier. We are also excited about the opportunity to work with Amazon to evolve and expand how we reach consumers with our device and consumables business concept,” he said. The details of that Alexa integration are scant as of now, but one imagines being able to ask Alexa about your plant’s pH levels or tell the speaker to adjust the light mixture. On the flip, Rise could notify users via Alexa when it’s time to water the plants.

There’s no question that consumer-grade vertical farms are still a pretty niche product right now, since many of them cost more than the average person can easily afford. (Rise’s single unit console starts at $549.) But the pandemic and accompanying disruptions to the food supply chain have undoubtedly increased folks’ desire to control more of what they eat, which has led to an influx of new devices. From Gardyn’s stylish take on at-home farming to consumer electronics companies like LG building them into the kitchen, vertical farming is definitely making its way into the home. 

Amazon, of course, wants to control your entire home, including your kitchen, so it’s not surprising the Seattle tech giant would partner making at-home vertical farming products. As well, the company has made forays into the gardening space before, like this patent from 2017. Amazon knowing what types of plants you are growing can fuel its selling machine to recommend recipes and other groceries.

Like it or not, Amazon’s moves in food tech tend to influence others, which means the collaborations and products that come out of the Rise partnership will influence the future of at-home vertical farming for everyone. 

Kalera Picks Denver for Its Next Commercial-Scale Vertical Farming Facility

Kalera continues its westward expansion. This week, the Orlando, Fla.-based indoor vertical farming company announced it will open its newest commercial-scale facility in Denver, Colo. in 2021. 

This will be Kalera’s fifth facility for commercial-scale vertical farms growing leafy greens. The company already operates two facilities in Orlando and is in the midst of constructing farms in Atlanta and Houston, both slated to open in early 2021. 

When we caught up with Kalera in 2019, the company had just broken ground on its second Orlando facility and was best known for serving hydroponically grown greens to the hospitality industry, including the Orlando World Center Marriott resort. One pandemic and countless restaurant shutdowns later, and Kalera had to pivot to keep business going. Earlier in 2020, the company struck a deal with Publix to sell its greens in the grocery mega-retailer’s supermarkets. The company now provides greens to both the food retail and hospitality sectors, a strategy it will take to Denver once its facility opens there.

Kalera’s farms use IoT, process automation, and cleanroom technology to grow leafy greens in a completely controlled environment without the use of pesticides. For now, the company is focused on leafy greens, which require less space to grow than other types of produce, making them ideal for the vertical farming format.

Kalera said in today’s press release it plans to open additional facilities around the U.S. as well as expand internationally.

Its rapid expansion comes at a time when indoor farming, whether vertical or another method, is attracting significant investment dollars. InFarm, which puts its small-scale farms inside the grocery store, raised $170 million in September, and Finnish startup iFarm raised $4 million in August. Also in August, a new company, called Unfold, raised $30 million to build out operations in the U.S.

Kalera’s Denver facility will open later in 2021 and, according to the company, create 60 new jobs in the area.

Gardyn Aims to Make At-Home Vertical Farming Small, Simple, and Stylish

Thanks to disruptions in the food supply chain, panic-buying sprees, and the general uncertainty of the times, growing food at home seems like a pretty good idea of late. Trouble is, many consumers don’t have the know-how to cultivate their own leafy greens and other produce in the backyard. Even those who do often lack adequate space.

A company called Gardyn is addressing both of those issues with an at-home vertical farming system that requires minimal input from the user and can easily fit inside a small apartment if need be. The idea, as Gardyn founder and CEO FX Rouxel explained to me over the phone last week, is to make growing food in one’s own home as simple and straightforward as possible. To do that, the company has built a farm that relies on AI to do much of the heavy lifting in terms of monitoring and maintaining an edible crop of food. Or as Rouxel said, “The system is managing everything for you.”

Gardyn’s system is made up of two parts: a compact vertical tower, which can grow as many as 30 plants, and an accompanying app powered by an AI assistant named “Kelby.” Users only have to order seeds and “plug” the seed pods into the vertical towers. The system automatically circulates water and nutrients to the plants, while Kelby monitors plant growth and sends reminders when it’s time to add water to the garden or harvest the plants. 

Right now, available crops from Gardyn’s site include mostly leafy greens and herbs, some flowers, cherry tomatoes, and jalapeños. Customers can also use their own seeds if preferred.

The system uses what Rouxel calls “a hybrid of different hydroponic technologies,” including the deep water method and aeroponics. (The company brands its approach as “hybriponics.”) By themselves, these different methods have certain limitations in the at-home setting. Deep water, where plant roots are fully submerged in nutrient-enriched water, requires a lot of space. Aeroponics is a great setup for outdoors, but once indoors it requires lighting, which gets expensive very quickly. Gardyn pulled elements from both to create a system that takes up only two square feet of space and doesn’t require any extra hardware. “Within just two square feet, you can produce a lot of food,” says Rouxel, adding that Gardyn’s units have produced “over 25,000 pounds of produce” during the last few months.

That quest to grow a lot of leafy greens in a small amount of space is an area with plenty of competition these days. Farmshelf recently unveiled its first-ever farm for the home, and companies like Rise Gardens and Agrilution (the latter recently bought by Miele) also offer promising solutions for the consumer space.

And while historically, investment in vertical farming has mainly gone towards the industrial-scale indoor farms (think AeroFarms), at-home farms are fast becoming a lucrative area. Investors, Rouxel explained to me, see traditional agriculture as a risky business that’s less insurable because its success is in part dependent on the weather outside. With climate change triggering more extreme weather, investors will look more and more to alternative solutions in controlled-environment agriculture.

“I am absolutely convinced we are going to see in the coming two years a total disruption in the way we grow things,” he says. Chiefly, that will be growing the food in much closer proximity to consumers, whether through at-home systems like Gardyn’s, in-store farms at grocery retailers, rooftop gardens, and high-tech greenhouses. “In future we’re going to have a spectrum of solutions,” Rouxel noted.

Getting these vertical farms closer to consumers and in their own homes will require bringing the price of the machines down. At the moment, Gardyn’s system is roughly on par pricewise with other systems out there that can realistically feed a family of four: $799 for the base model all the way up to $1485 for the “Plus” model.

Rouxel is aware that the cost is still too high for many consumers. “We don’t want this to be only for well-off people,” he told me. “It’s important that we find ways that anyone can afford this.”

Many companies, including Gardyn, offer financing options on their farms now. And more investment dollars going into the space in the future could mean companies have the time and space to innovate on ways to make their system cheaper for the average consumer.

While pricing remains a question, one thing that’s certain is that at-home vertical farming is on the path to becoming a regular part of the kitchen, rather than just a trend. “What we want is to develop solutions that will quickly change the way people access food,” said Rouxel. “We won’t solve everything, that’s for sure, but we want to be part of the solution for how we shape food.”

InFarm Raises $170M to Expand Its Vertical Farming Network

Berlin, Germany-based vertical farming company InFarm announced today it has raised $170 million in the first close of its Series C round, bringing its total funding so far to $304.5 million.

The investment round, a mix of equity and debt financing, was led by LGT Lightstone with participation from Hanaco, Bonnier, Haniel, and Latitude, as well as existing investors Atomico, TriplePoint Capital, Mons Capital and Astanor Ventures. InFarm said in today’s press release that it expects the Series C round to eventually reach $200 million.

InFarm has built its reputation, not to mention its coffers, on the idea of getting fresh, local greens to more cities around the world via its network of high-tech vertical farms. The farms are smallish, pod-like devices that can live in grocery stores, restaurants, and food distribution centers. The farms use hydroponics and cloud-based software to grow leafy greens in completely controlled environments. A big benefit with InFarms’ approach is that, since farms are placed inside grocery stores, greens can be harvested onsite and sold without having to travel. 

Sourcing greens close to the store is becoming more commonplace as companies develop smaller vertical farms. While InFarm might be the most high-profile player in this area of vertical farming, it isn’t the only company bringing greens literally to market. Farm.One just installed its own mini-vertical farm at a Whole Foods in Manhattan and has plans to expand to other stores soon. Vertical Field launched a geoponic vertical farm at New York’s famed Evergreen market in August. Brooklyn-based Square Roots puts a slightly different twist on the concept by placing its shipping container farms next to food distribution centers. The company currently has a partnership with North American distributor Gordon Food Service.

All of which is to say, InFarm may be leading the farm-in-a-grocery-store movement, but it won’t be the only company grabbing major investment dollars for long.

InFarm raised $100 million in June of 2019. Since then, it has struck deals with major grocery retailers around the world, including  Aldi Süd in Germany, Kroger in the U.S., Empire in Canada, and Kinokuniya in Japan, among other places. The company said today it expects its farming network to total more than 5 million square feet by 2025, making it the largest distributed farming network in the world. 

To do that, the company will expand to new cities in future. The new investment capital will go towards that goal. InFarm will also use some of it to complete development on a next-gen version of its farm. 

Food Tech News: Wild Type Is Looking for Chefs, White Castle Is Offering Rewards

Some final bits of food tech news from ’round the web this week:

Wild Type Has a Pre-Order List for Chefs

While still a good five years out from commercial production, Wild Type said this week it has opened a pre-order list for chefs wanting to include the company’s cell-based seafood into their dishes. Right now, the company is developing a cultured salmon prototype that would work in sushi dishes. Wild Type cofounder Justin Kolbeck clarified that the company is not launching its product, just “releasing news” that they “have the next iteration of the product.

White Castle Launches a Rewards Program

White Castle has launched its first-ever rewards platform, called “the Craver Nation loyalty program.” Like other digital rewards programs out there, Craver Nation will offer discounts and deals to loyal customers that sign up for the White Castle mobile app. The program was trialed earlier this summer in Louisville, Ky. and is another digital tool in the chain’s quickly-growing arsenal of them.

Asia-based abillionveg Raises Fresh Funding

Singapore-based app abillionveg announced this week that it has closed a $3 million pre-Series A round, with participation from Nan Fung Group, CloudKitchens, and York Capital. The app features community-led reviews for vegan and vegetarian products, including both retail and restaurant offerings. Simultaneous to the funding news, the company announced it has struck partnerships with plant-based heavyweight Impossible Foods and restaurant-booking platform Chope.

Cornucopia Farms Is Building a Large-Scale Hydroponic Farm in Georgia

Leafy green lovers, take note. Marietta, Ga.-based Cornucopia Farms said this week it is completing construction on a 56,000-square-foot hydroponic farm two hours east of Atlanta. The farm will grow all manner of greens, including herbs, Romaine, and Bibb lettuce, among other types, and will produce an estimated 12 million heads of leafy greens and 2 million pounds of herbs per year when it is completed. That won’t be for a minute, though: completion of the project is expected at some point in the latter half of 2021.

Farm.One Installs Its Mini-Vertical Farm at Whole Foods in Manhattan

NYC-based vertical farming company Farm.One announced today it has launched a mini-farm inside the newly opened Whole Foods Market in Manhattan West. 

Farm.One custom designed the farm for this location. From a visual standpoint, that means the design matches the Whole Foods’ look, while the physical footprint — 36 square feet — does not intrude on shopping space. The farm can hold 150 plants, which it grows using artificial lighting and the hydroponic method. 

It being a mini-farm, there isn’t a ton of variety in the crops grown. In fact, for now, the mini-farm grows only basil, which will be used for in-store pizzas and cocktails. Which sounds about right for a Whole Foods in Manhattan. Today’s press release says the farm will grow about eight pounds of basil each month. Whole Foods’ staff will harvest the plants and, thanks to the accompanying software platform, require little supervision from Farm.One engineers.

Farm.One operates other custom locations at EATALY in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood and at the Project Farmhouse event space. The company will also unveil a new farm in a yet-to-be-named plant-based restaurant in October. Thus far, the company has raised nearly $500,000 in funding.

While growing cocktail garnishes won’t exactly end world hunger, Farm.One’s continued growth across Manhattan shows how varied the uses for vertical farming are getting. Not so long ago, the concept was the territory of large-scale operations in warehouse-style buildings on the outskirts of cities. Now, vertical farms have made their way into schools, restaurants, grocery stores, grocery distribution centers, and, increasingly, consumers’ homes. The more use cases we can see in action, the better we can understand where vertical farming is most valuable as a component of our future food system.

Farm.One has plans to build other mini-farms as well as flagship locations in other major U.S. cities as well as expand internationally over the next couple of years.

Agtech Startup Nordetect Wins €10,000 Prize for Portable Nutrient Sensor

There are plenty of reasons food producers are considering indoor agriculture these days, including the potential for better crops and yields thanks to tech integrations and the ability to keep farm workers safer (ie, not laboring in the thick of wildfire smoke). However, to make indoor farming as efficient as possible, and thereby cut down on food waste, more precision around plant nutrients, water, and other elements is needed.

Denmark-based startup Nordetect is one such company tackling this challenge. The precision-agriculture-focused company just nabbed the top spot (and €10,000) of agtech company Priva’s recent Horti Heroes challenge, which showcased companies innovating in the horticulture space.

Nordetect, which is also a part of the SOSV portfolio, won the challenge for its portable device that measures nutrients in soil, water, and plant tissue so growers can more precisely use fertilizer in crops and get better yields and less waste.

On its website, Nordetect says this nanosensor can be used on anything from leaf samples to soil to manure. The system also integrates with any existing software the farm might be using, and a built in GPS keeps track of where each sample is located in the field or farm. A major differentiator Nordetect offers is its ability to measure nutrients within minutes, as opposed to the traditional process that can take weeks.

Speaking in today’s press release, Nordetect CEO Keenan Pinto said the company’s target market was high-value crop space — that is, areas that grow crops like leafy greens, tomatoes, and cucumbers. “These are crops that have a nutrient requirement change between their vegetative and generative phases… and if you can get the fertilization correct, you can also achieve a significantly higher flower rate and yield,“ he said.

Many indoor farms, whether tech-enabled greenhouses or vertical farms, now grow those crops. At the same time, the number of these indoor farming facilities keeps rising and their locations include everywhere from isolated warehouses to grocery store parking lots to food desserts. 

Priva is something of a heavyweight in the world of indoor farming, which means its awarding of the prize to Nordetect and subsequent partnership with the company will lead to further technological innovation around precision agriculture inside the above farming locations.  

Food Tech News: Virtual Derby Fare Is Upon Us

The Kentucky Derby is around the corner! Not that I or many other folks will be physically present for the famed event this year. We will, however, be cooking up some classic Derby fare, courtesy of the internet. Read on for more on that as well as other food tech news bits from the last week.

Virtual Derby Menu 2020

Churchill Downs Racetrack, home of the Kentucky Derby, is once again offering an at-home Derby menu for couch-bound attendees of the famous event — of which there will be many more this year, given the venue’s reduced capacity requirements. For the event, taking place September 5, Churchill Downs has created an at-home menu fans can access online and create in their own home kitchens. 

Africa’s First High-Tech Greenhouse

Van der Hoeven Horticultural Projects has started construction on the first fully automated glass lettuce greenhouse in Africa. The greenhouse, outside Cairo, Egypt and roughly 2.5 hectares in size, will grow herbs and lettuce, while automation technology will regulate climate and plant density for more optimal growing in desert conditions.

The Profitability of Plant-Based Eggs

Eat Just, maker of the famed JUST plant-based egg, is on track to profitability, according to a report this week from Reuters. The company aims to turn an operating profit before the end of next year is also considering and initial public offering.

Target All-In on Online Grocery

Target announced this week that its grocery pickup service is now available across the U.S. The service is now available in about 85 percent of its stores. For now, only Target’s most popular items (about 750 of them) are available for pickup, though the ongoing popularity of online grocery could change that in the future.