Europe will soon have its largest commercial vertical farming facility to date. Taiwan-based vertical farming company the YesHealth Group announced today via email that, in partnership with Nordic Harvest, it is building out a 14-story, 7,000-square-meter facility on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark.
YesHealth Group operates a number of vertical farms in Asia and Europe that are equipped with the company’s in-house proprietary tech and provide produce to local retailers and other food outlets.
The partnership with Nordic Harvest, a vertical farming company based in the Copenhagen area, was first announced back in April, when construction on the new facility began. In today’s press release, YesHealthGroup CCO Jesper Hansen called the partnership “a crucial step” of his company’s expansion into Europe.
The Copenhagen farm is expected to start production in the first quarter of 2021. According to today’s press release, it will use a mixture of YesHealthGroup’s technologies, which include hydroponics, robotics, liquid microbial fertilizer formula for nourishing the plants, more than 20,000 LED lights, and smart software to grow leafy greens. Nordic Harvest will manage operations locally.
The news comes at the end of a major year for commercial vertical farming in terms of funding and development. Recent milestones include Pleny’s massive $140 million fundraise led by Softbank’s Vision Fund 1 and Sweden-based Urban Oasis’ $1.2 million fundraise to increase its production capacity by 15 to 20 times.
YesHealthGroup is projecting profits within the first year of its Nordic Harvest farm. Those projections are, according to the press release, based on a “scale-up model” in which the farm will expand from an initial 200-ton annual capacity to 1,000 tons in the fourth quarter of 2021.
