GoodLeaf Farms has reached profitability across its three facilities, in Ontario, Quebec and Alberta — a rare result in vertical farming, a sector in which many US start-ups have failed to make money. Most recently, 80 Acres Farms announced it could not continue in business.

Chief executive Andy O'Brien puts the difference down to pace. "Any startup, regardless of the sector, it's a walk before you run, and I think a lot of companies started running, which means that you bring on a lot more cost before you have sales," he said. "Some of the companies that I've seen in the U.S. had 250 people in R and D, and that's before you actually had sales. One other company in the U.S. had a payroll of 850 people and 20 million dollars in sales. Doesn't work." Many of those firms began before COVID with heavy private-equity and government money and spent years failing to find a working model; Canada, further behind, had to work one out while they struggled.

GoodLeaf's answer has been to concentrate on what makes indoor growing different and viable — microgreens, for instance, a product unique to the indoor system — and to run its growing spaces like food-manufacturing plants rather than farms. "We're looking at yields and waste and all things you would look at to optimize a typical factory," said O'Brien, who previously worked at General Mills, Mars and Campbell's, where decades-old playbooks existed. "In vertical farming, there really isn't."

The main difference from a factory is time: six days for microgreens, fifteen for a head of lettuce, against minutes for a can of soup. Against a field or greenhouse, though, it is fast — a head of lettuce outdoors takes 50 to 60 days and Canada allows perhaps two or three cycles a summer, whereas GoodLeaf's microgreens take about five days and grow all year round.

O'Brien hopes the result draws more Canadian entrants — "more competition is better for everybody, whether it be consumers to retailers to equipment suppliers" — and says the company has also benefited from being a Canadian brand as trade tensions with the United States push consumers towards domestic products.

Source: Manitoba Co-operator