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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Plenty

Plenty’s New Vertical Farm To Produce 4.5M Pounds of Leafy Greens From a Single City Block

Today indoor ag startup Plenty announced what it claims is the world’s most advanced vertical farm. Located in Compton, California, the company says the farm is designed to yield up to 4.5 million pounds of leafy greens annually, occupying just a city block’s worth of space.

Unlike most other vertical farms that grow produce on flat planes, Plenty’s 3D system uses vertical towers nearly two stories high, which it claims allows them to yield up to 350 times that of a conventional farm.

The company also uses robotics in nearly every step of the process, from planting to harvest. You can see the system in action in the video below:

Plenty Farm Waltz Tour

“After investing nearly a decade into research and development, ​​Plenty has cracked the code on a scalable platform for indoor farming,” said Plenty CEO Arama Kukutai. “With Plenty’s first commercial farm, we’re proving that our uniquely vertical indoor farms can deliver a reliable, year-round supply of fresh produce with positive unit economics.”

The company’s emphasis on unit economics makes sense, particularly in light of the struggles of the vertical farming industry over the past year. High upfront capital expenditures have made it difficult for companies like App Harvest to stay afloat, which means investors are increasingly focused on high-volume production of margin-positive produce going forward.

The opening of a high-tech farm in Compton is a milestone for a city with historically high poverty and unemployment. The city’s mayor, Emma Sharif, emphasized over 30% of the farm’s employees hail from Compton during the announcement.

“Plenty’s farm can serve as a model for improving access to fresh, locally grown food for urban populations while fostering cities’ economic growth,” said Sharif.

According to Plenty, the Compton Farm grows four types of leafy greens: Baby Arugula, Baby Kale, Crispy Lettuce, and Curly Baby Spinach. Plenty says the Curly Baby Spinach is one of the world’s only vertically grown, pesticide-free spinach products.

Plenty’s leafy greens can be found in Northern and Southern California locations, including Bristol Farms, Northern California Whole Foods Market stores, and local grocers in Compton and Southern California Walmart stores. Plenty’s greens are also featured as a meal ingredient on Singapore Airlines flights from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

Vertical Farmer Plenty Announces $1B Financing Deal With REIT Reality Income

Vertical farming company Plenty has entered into a strategic alliance with REIT Realty Income to fund Plenty’s vertical farm development. Under the agreement, Realty Income will acquire and provide development funding for properties that will house Plenty’s indoor farms, which will be leased to Plenty under long-term net leases. The agreement provides for up to $1 billion of development opportunities.

As the initial transaction of the alliance, Realty Income will acquire the land and provide development funding for the first farm of Plenty’s indoor vertical farm campus near Richmond, Virginia, which was announced last year. Plenty expects the future multi-farm campus to deliver more than 20 million pounds of produce across multiple crops annually. The first farm to be developed on the campus will grow strawberries with Plenty partner Driscoll’s and initially serve the Northeast market.

If this sale and leaseback type of transaction sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because you read yesterday about a similar kind of deal being used to fund sidewalk delivery robot startup Kiwibot. However, unlike the food robotics market, sale & leaseback transactions are pretty common with real estate assets. Farmers have been using these types of arrangements for decades, so it’s not all that surprising to see REITS start to take an interest in more tech-forward farming players like Plenty.

It’s also not surprising for a capital-hungry vertical farming business like Plenty to look to this type of financing to fund its growth. AppHarvest and Kalera entered into sale and leaseback deals last year after running into financial troubles and largely exhausting access to more traditional growth capital in the venture market. Plenty has already raised a massive $914 million in funding as of last year and had started to run into financial difficulties early this year, announcing they would close their San Francisco facility.

Now, with its new funding facility through Reality, the company has access to a large – but fundamentally more risky – pool of growth capital.

CEA Grower Spread Says Its Vertical Farming Tech Is Ready for ‘Mass Production’ of Strawberries

Kyoto, Japan-based controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company Spread said this week it has developed technology that will let it mass-produce strawberries in a vertical farm setting.

Spread is “old guard” when it comes to indoor farming, having completed its first large-scale vertical farm in 2007. Since 2018, the company has also operated its Techno Farm, which uses robotics to automate much of the grow process for plants. Up to now, Spread has grown leafy greens inside these environments. And like a few others in the vertical farming space, the company is now applying its technology and learnings from that process to growing strawberries. 

Strawberries still top the Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list, which means they contain the highest levels pesticides of any fruit. They are also extremely perishable and prone to damage during the shipping distribution process. That makes farms like the ones Spread operates suitable grow environments, since vertical farms are inherently pest-free already and typically situated closer to consumers. Spread’s Techno Farm, for example, is located in Kansai Science City, which sits at the intersection of the Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara prefectures in western Japan.

Strawberries are in high-demand in Japan as in other parts of the world, and Spread joins companies like Plenty, Oishii, and AppHarvest have already said they are planning to grow the fruit in a CEA environment. Oishii also grows the über-premium Omakase berry — normally only available in a specific region of Japan for a short time — inside its facility. 

Spread said this week it is considering distribution of its strawberries to Europe and North America as well as Asia. The company is also working on grains, mushrooms, and other fruits as potential future crops on its farms. 

High-End Strawberry Grower Oishii to Launch ‘Everyday Berry’ via Vertical Farming

Controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company Oishii is best known at this point for its high-end, vertically grown strawberries that cost a cool $50 for an eight-pack. That makes the New Jersey-based company’s wares pretty inaccessible for many consumers — until now. Oishii explained this week that it will be launching an “everyday berry” in the future.

Strawberries are by many accounts the next “it” crop for CEA. As Oishii explained to Vertical Farm Daily, one of the issues with traditional strawberry production is that about 90 percent of all strawberries grown in the U.S. have to be shipped from California. To ensure safer transportation, the fruits are engineered to be resilient at the expense of quality and taste. 

Oishii’s Omakase Berry, which the company grows in its vertical farm facility in New Jersey, is in many ways the antithesis of the traditionally grown strawberry. Omakase Berries typically only grow for a short part of the year in a very specific region of Japan, and they are known for their sweetness and strong aromas. They are also, as noted above, a very premium produce item and, in the case of Oishii, a very expensive one.

But now, Oishii is using its recently raised $50 million funding round to expand R&D and commercialize an everyday berry, with the goal of becoming one of the largest strawberry growers in the world. Oishii will apply the learnings and proprietary technology used to grow its Omakase Berry towards other strawberries as well as other crops, such as tomatoes and peppers.

Strawberries are one of the dirtier crops when it comes to pesticides, and more than one CEA company is now attempting to grow the fruit indoors at scale. Plenty announced a partnership with berry grower Driscoll’s last year. Meanwhile, a Singapore-based company called SinGrow is growing strawberries indoors to make the fruit more widely available in the city state without relying on imports.

Oishii said this week it will focus for now on local markets in northern New Jersey and New York, but also plans to build more farms in other cities and even countries. 

AeroFarms Partners With Hortifrut to Grow Blueberries, Caneberries Via Vertical Farming

Vertical farming company AeroFarms this week announced it a partnership with Chile-based berry producer and distributor Hortifrut. Via the multi-year partnership, the companies will research and develop blueberry and caneberry production in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) settings, including vertical farms.

Up to now, AeroFarms has been known primarily for growing leafy greens and herbs inside its commercial-scale vertical farms on the east coast. Blueberries and caneberries (blackberries, raspberries, etc.) are both a departure from the usual from AeroFarms, and somewhat unique in the vertical farming space, where strawberries are more common. 

According to a press release, the first phase of the partnership between the two companies is underway, and blueberry plants will arrive at AeroFarms’ New Jersey facility this spring. Hortifrut has bred “compact blueberry plants ideal for vertical farming,” while AeroFarms has adjusted its proprietary tech system for berry production. 

While the companies aim to commercialize the process of growing these berries indoors, there is not yet any kind of timeframe as to when we might see vertically grown blueberries or caneberries on store shelves. Rather, this first phase of the partnership appears to be more about experimenting with Hortifrut berries in an indoor setting and assessing how feasible it is to grow such foods via CEA.

Fruit on the vertical farm is still the exception rather than the rule when it comes to the crops companies grow. As noted above, strawberries are more common at this point, with companies like SinGrow and Oishii growing high-end versions of the berry and Plenty partnering with Driscoll’s on the west coast. 

AeroFarms’ news comes just days after the company announced it will go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company Spring Valley Acquisition Corp.

Oishii Raises $50M to Raise More High-End, Vertically Grown Strawberries

Vertical farming company Oishii has raised $50 million in Series A funding, according to a press release sent to The Spoon today. The round was led by SPARX Group’s Mirai Creation Fund II, with participation from Sony Innovation Fund, PKSHA Technology, Social Starts, and several angel investors. It brings Oishii’s total funding to date to $55 million.

With the new funds, Oishii will expand its flagship vertical farm, which is located just outside of New York City. Unlike the majority of companies currently in the vertical farming space, Oishii does does not grow the standard leafy greens and herbs. Instead, the company grows strawberries — specifically, the Omakase variety.

The Omakase Berry typically only grows for a short part of the year in a very specific region of Japan. Oishii founder and CEO Hiroki Koga decided, when building out his vertical farm, to attempt to replicate the elements of a perfect day in Japan (e.g., humidity levels, light) inside a controlled-environment farm in the U.S. The realist is an Omakase Berry that can grow 365 days per year.

The Oishii grow system combines the automation technologies found on many vertical farms today with traditional strawberry cultivation methods developed in Japan specifically for the Omakase berry.

Oishii first introduced its berries in 2018; they are currently available for pickup and delivery in New York City. As produce goes, these products aren’t cheap. A pack of eight strawberries goes for $50, not including delivery fees or tip. Berries are also available at select retailers around New York City, most of them high-end speciality food shops.

Given its price point and limited availability, Oishii’s Omakase Berry is probably not destined to reach huge numbers of consumers — the goal of many other controlled ag farming operations. Instead, the mission seems to be about providing U.S.-based consumers with the experience of tasting something they would ordinarily only be able to get in one tiny region at one time of year.

Oishii said that this week’s funding will go also go towards developing other varieties of strawberries as well as growing other types of produce, such as tomatoes.

The company joins SinGrow, Plenty, and others in moving vertical farming beyond leafy greens. 

Plenty Expands to More Stores in Northern California, Launches Text-a-Farmer Feature

Vertical farming company Plenty today announced an expansion to 17 more Safeway stores across Northern California, as well as a new tech feature that lets shoppers text Plenty’s farmers directly.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the Northern California expansion is part of the multi-year deal between Plenty and Safeway parent company Albertsons. Through that deal, leafy greens grown in Plenty’s controlled-environment vertical farming facility in the San Francisco Bay Area get shipped to Albertsons stores up and down California. The goal is to eventually get plenty’s produce into more than 430 Albertsons stores, including those under the Safeway and Vons brands.

Simultaneous to this expansion is the launch of what Plenty calls its Text-a-Farmer feature. The tool functions much like its name suggests. A sign in the grocery store’s produce section will display a number users can text questions to. Those questions can be about anything related to Plenty’s produce, from “How should I store my greens?” to “Is your packaging recyclable?” Plenty farmers answer the questions in real time via text with the customer.

The Text-a-Farmer feature will be available at stores selling Plenty’s produce. The idea is to give shoppers more information about their food while they are still in the store.

Commercial-scale vertical farming as a whole, meanwhile, continues to expand, raking in the investment dollars in the process. Bowery, based on the East Coast U.S., recently announced its most “technologically advanced” farm to date, while Orlando, Florida-based Kalera is building out facilities across the U.S., including Colorado and Texas. On the investment front, GoodLeaf just raised $65 million to expand across Canada, Stockholm, Sweden-based Urban Oasis raised $1.2 million, and Plenty itself nabbed $140 million. The latter happened this past October.

Around the time of that investment, Plenty also announced a partnership with Driscoll’s to grow strawberries via vertical farming. Plenty also operates a farm in Compton, California, to service southern parts of the state. 

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. 

Plenty and Driscoll’s Partner to Grow Strawberries Indoors

San Francisco Bay Area-based vertical farming startup Plenty and well-known berry brand Driscoll’s announced a partnership today to grow strawberries year-round via controlled-environment indoor farms. The partnership will use Plenty’s indoor farming technology and incorporate Driscoll’s proprietary genetics for strawberries, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

Plenty hinted at strawberries (and tomatoes) more than a year ago, when it unveiled its high-tech vertical farm Tigris. Currently, the company is best known for its mixtures of leafy greens, which it grows indoors via the hydronponic method. Plenty’s facilities also utilize sensors, LED light mixtures, and temperature and air control to create the optimal growing environment for plants.

Leafy greens are still one of the most common crops grown in these controlled-environment farms, and for a few of good reasons. For one thing, they’re one of the most popular produce types among U.S. consumers today. They are also far more delicate than, say, a mango, making it harder to transport them without spoilage. Leafy greens also yield more crop in a smaller space compared to something like a row of sweetcorn, and they can be harvested faster. Something like a strawberry takes more time to grow, and one profile of Plenty last year noted that it can take up to nine months to understand how a strawberry plant performs inside a controlled environment operation.

Lately, though, more ag tech companies have announced plans to grow more than arugula and herbs. Most notably, a Singapore-based company called SinGrow has employed its proprietary vertical farming tech to grow strawberries on a rack designed specifically for that fruit. SinGrow also creates its own strawberry breeds. Unfold, which just raised $30 million, has added cucumbers and tomatoes to its roster. Plenty itself said at the time of the Tigris launch that it wants to grow “exotic” fruits and vegetables, though as yet the company hasn’t named specific crops.

Strawberries aren’t exactly exotic, but for vertical farming, they are a logical next crop after leafy greens. Plenty’s home state of California produces over 91 percent of the country’s entire strawberry supply, and that fruit is also high on U.S. consumers’ lists.

To start, Driscoll’s will grow strawberries at Plenty’s Laramie, Wyoming facility. Driscoll’s Chairman and CEO J. Miles Reiter said in today’s press release that this partnership “will create a competitive market edge.” While that remains to be seen, one thing we can expect with a fair amount of certainty is that more companies will be growing strawberries via controlled environments in the months to come. 

Publix Has Ambitious Plans to Get More Hydroponically Grown Greens in Its Stores

Back in 2019, we predicted that hydroponically grown greens would soon become a mainstay of grocery stores in the U.S. We did not predict that a global health crisis would disrupt the supply chain and make consumers hyper-aware of where their food comes from and what goes into growing it, but that’s exactly what happened. The result? Hydroponic farming’s march into the grocery store has been accelerated.

Perhaps no one is pursuing this shift more seriously than grocery retail chain Publix, whose Greenwise brand has partnered with Brick Street Farms to locate a shipping-container-turned vertical farm at one of Greenwise’s brick-and-mortar markets in Florida. 

The 40-foot shipping container (see image above) sits outside the Greenwise market in Lakeland, Florida. Like other vertical farming operations, it uses hydroponics to grow leafy greens without the use of soil or pesticides. Greens are packaged onsite and travel mere feet to reach the produce section of the store.

Speaking on the phone this week, Curt Epperson, Business Development Director of Produce and Floral for Publix, and Albert Gottuso, Category Manager for Produce at Publix, highlighted the advantage of this method over traditional means of getting produce in the store. Most of Publix’ conventional leafy greens are grown in California and have to travel thousand of miles before they reach store shelves. Besides the obvious lower carbon footprint, growing greens onsite also uses less water than traditional farming and means fresher greens on store shelves compared to those that are harvested shipped, and hydrated before they ever reach the produce section.

But hydroponic greens were on the Publix agenda long before the deal with Brick Street Farms. During our call, Gottuso said the company has maintained relationships for years with local hydroponic farmers to sell greens in its stores. For instance, Livingston, TN-based Tanimura & Antle sells its butter lettuce at Publix stores in that state.

“This hydroponic product out of nowhere became our best seller for leafy lettuce,” he said. That in turn led the chain to consider how it could supply hydroponically grown greens to more of its locations. 

Multiple efforts are currently underway. Earlier in 2020, Publix partnered with Vertical Roots on a mobile vertical farm customers could interact with. In March, the chain teamed up with large-scale vertical farming company Kalera.

All of these efforts fit into Publix overall hydroponic program, which Epperson says is still testing different techniques in terms of getting indoor greens to local stores. 

Gottuso added that the chain is expanding this hydroponic program so that every state has a grower with an indoor farm supporting local stores in its area. “Our goal is that every store that we service has a local hydroponic program that can offer an assortment of variety of blends,” he said. 

This push towards local, more sustainably grown greens is happening across the grocery sector. Kroger has a partnership with Berlin-based InFarm, which puts its vertical farming pods in the store’s produce section. And just this week, San Francisco-based Plenty announced a partnership with Albertsons to sell its greens (which are grown offsite in a warehouse) at that retailer’s store.  

Publix doesn’t plan to stop at leafy greens. Though they are by far the most popular product to grow hydroponically, Epperson suggests there is potential for cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers, among other produce types. 

As to whether or not hydroponic farming could ever replace traditional farming, at least in terms of leafy greens, Epperson noted that the jury is still out. “It’s very difficult to get the yield you would get in conventional growing,” he said. Calling it “blue sky” thinking, he pointed to a day when Publix might have vertical farms located next to all of its distribution centers. And that idea isn’t exactly unattainable — Square Roots is already doing something similar with Gordon Food Service. 

The introduction of technology to the greenhouse could also play a big role in making hydroponics more widespread in the grocery sector. Gottuso says technology allows companies to build greenhouses in areas where they historically haven’t been (like the Southeast). These large greenhouses also provide the scale needed to supply the shelves of a major grocery retailer because they are “adept to growing larger amounts of produce.”

If Publix’ ambitions around hydroponics can do likewise and scale effectively, we can expect many more locally grown greens — and other produce types — to hit store shelves in near future.

Gotham Greens Expands Its High-Tech Greenhouse Network to Baltimore

Indoor farming company Gotham Greens today announced the official opening of a new hydroponic greenhouse, this one outside Baltimore, Maryland. The 100,000-square-foot facility is the company’s seventh greenhouse in the U.S., and its first one to grow year-round produce, according to a press release from Gotham Greens. 

The launch of the Baltimore facility arrives on the heels of Gotham Greens’ first New England facility, which opened in Providence, Rhode Island at the very end of 2019. The company also operates locations in Brooklyn, Chicago, and Denver.

All of Gotham’s greenhouses use hydroponics, a method of growing plants without soil. Crops grow in trays (as opposed to the tower-like structure found in other hydroponic farms) and receive a constant stream of water enriched with nutrients that is soaked up by the plant roots. Proprietary software lets farms automate much of the plant monitoring and management, so that they can find the best “recipe” of temperature, humidity, and light levels needed for each crop.

Gotham Greens said in the press release that the new farm in Baltimore will grow “more than six million heads of lettuce annually,” which is roughly the same amount grown by other large-scale indoor farming operations, Kalera and Plenty among them. 

Millions of heads of greens grown throughout the year means a greater number of consumers around the country can access fresher produce harvested much more recently and closer to the store. But these warehouse-sized indoor farms are no longer the only indoor agtech operations supplying the consumer demand for local food. Companies like Freight Farms and Square Roots operate smaller farms housed inside shipping containers, some of which are located next door to major food distribution centers. Others, like InFarm, are going even more local by putting the farm in the grocery store.

There are also a number of efforts being made to bring indoor farming concepts right into the consumer home, though it’ll be a while before farms become standard kitchen appliances. Even when they do, it’s unlikely a consumer-focused farm from someone like LG would even compete directly with Gotham Greens, which serves businesses rather than consumers and grows produce in vastly larger quantities.

The new Gotham Greens farm in Baltimore will provide greens to restaurant and foodservice customers across 10 states in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern U.S.

Gotham Greens Makes Moves Into New England With Another High-tech Vertical Farm

Brooklyn, NY-based agtech company Gotham Greens marked its first move into the New England region today with the grand opening and first harvest of a new high-tech farming facility in Providence, R.I.

The company said in a press release that its new 100,000 sq. ft. facility, formerly a General Electric lighting factory, will grow 6 million heads of lettuce annually. Gotham will supply those greens and herbs to retailers like Whole Foods, Star Market, and other regional grocery stores. 

Gotham, which was founded in 2009 and has raised $30.1 million to date, operates a network of greenhouses across the U.S. The company uses the hydroponic technique, which means crops grow in trays without soil and soak up nutrient-enriched water through their roots. Like a growing number of indoor farming operations, Gotham’s system is fairly automated, with software controlling the amount of light and nutrients crops receive as well as the temperature of the greenhouses. 

The Providence greenhouse had its ribbon-cutting ceremony today. The farm is Gotham’s first location in the New England area.

Gotham is just one of many companies who’ve lately announced large-scale indoor farming facilities that rely on high-tech systems to grow and harvest heads of lettuce. Though Plenty shelved its plans to build out a farm in the Seattle area, it did recently announce its intention for one in the middle of Los Angeles. Kalera broke ground on a massive facility outside Orlando, FL that will grow 5 million heads of lettuce annually. And this year, Square Roots partnered with Gordon Food Service to build vertical farms onsite at many of the latter’s North American distribution centers.

Gotham’s new facility joins its existing roster of farms, which includes three in the NYC area, two in the Midwest, and one in the Denver.