Vertical Farming Demonstration Centre

Challenge

Already an established industry in North America and Asia, vertical farming is attracting more and more interest from entrepreneurs in Western Europe. In addition to research purposes, the Vertical Farming Demonstration Centre is mainly intended for demonstrating the potential of vertical farming. The challenge in this project was to develop an accessible multi-layered growing system that would allow commercial vegetable production in any location or climate.

Solution

Urban Crops researches and develops various growing strategies. There is a robotic growing area, which is a completely sealed climate chamber where any desired environmental conditions can be created. This chamber contains eight production layers that are 18 metres deep, each equipped with LED lighting, irrigation and CO2 dosing systems. Through an input line and two robots at each end of the system, the RFID-tagged growing trays (with 10 plants each) can be placed into the system fully automatically. HortiMaX supplied the irrigation and water disinfection units for this project. These units provide a wide range of features and capabilities. The facility also uses a HortiMaX MultiMa process computer, customized to the specific needs of its logistics system.