Stacked Farm, an Australian vertical farming company founded in 2016, is expanding to the United States with plans for a large-scale facility in Southern California and a research and customer experience centre in Las Vegas, Nevada, AgFunderNews reports.
The move comes after years of correction in the vertical farming sector, which has closed or sharply reduced many US indoor farms. Founder and chief executive Daniel Tzvetkoff says his company chose to grow slowly. "You've got to scale up in steps, and you've got to make sure everything works before you start to build these large-scale facilities," he told AgFunderNews, contrasting that with US operators that raised large sums of venture capital and planned to "solve the problems later".
Tzvetkoff says the company proved its model first in Australia, one of the world's most expensive markets for labour and energy. The California farm will copy the Australian facility, from its crop recipes and operating systems to its production processes and automation.
Stacked Farm develops its technology in house, from lighting to automation and growing methods, and builds, owns and operates its farms itself rather than building them for others. Tzvetkoff says its own lights give off less heat than off-the-shelf ones, so the cooling and dehumidification system can be smaller, an important point for an industry long troubled by energy costs.
California was chosen because it is the leading US state for lettuce and herb production. The farm is due to open in 2028, and the company plans to open two facilities a year in the US. It is already securing land in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas.
The Las Vegas centre opened this month and is meant to reduce risk before the large farm starts: customers approve the product before the facility opens. Stacked Farm has kept a sales team in the US for nearly three years and has long-term supply agreements with Great West Produce in California, Lagudi Fresh Food Group in Nevada and the retail distributor Mana Foods. The interview was conducted by Jennifer Marston of AgFunderNews.
Photo: Bright Agrotech / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: AgFunderNews
Comments
(0)