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Inside Growy: A Robot-Run Vertical Farm Tour in Amsterdam · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there, and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Eutrema Limited.
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  We make interesting fertilisers, novel biostimulants, and organic biopesticides.
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  We're based in the UK, but last week I headed over to Holland,
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  to the Netherlands, to Amsterdam specifically, and even more specifically than
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  that the Docklands next to the old town and we went on a visit to Groey.
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  Groey so grow and then a y on the end and they
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  are a fairly long established vertical farm and
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  based in Amsterdam but also expanding all around
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  the world and they're a really interesting vertical farm
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  and hydroponic company for a number of different reasons and
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  they sort of not your typical vertical
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  farms so i just wanted to talk about them in more detail because they
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  were really interesting the first thing is that they they're
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  not backed by a lot of like they're
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  not listed on the stock exchange as far as i'm aware it's
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  just a couple of private investors and the an
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  actual farmer and his daughter that were
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  family that were started up experimenting
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  with vertical farms back on their farm in about
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  2016 and then they got a couple of private investors
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  to invest in and so they work with partners around
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  the world as well to expand but it's not like your typical you
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  know wall street city of
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  london type investment strategy you know black.
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  Rock and such like investing investment houses
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  and hedge funds and stuff like this venture capitalists so that
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  was interesting from that perspective but also because they were
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  a lot more open about what their technology and
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  they didn't need to sort of lie about
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  their production capacities and things like
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  this because they they weren't trying to get investment they weren't trying to show
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  they were massively profitable even though they were doing a really
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  good job of that so as i say it was off in the docklands of amsterdam and in
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  a big not purpose-built facility but very close to purpose built and they um
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  really suited their requirements they had solar panels on the roof to provide
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  some of the energy that they needed for their farm.
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  And they were providing leafy greens at the moment and microgreens into the
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  Dutch supermarket sector. So not processing, not for food production and.
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  These, as I said in the previous episode, these were on sale at the Jumbo supermarket
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  near where I was staying, which is my favorite supermarket. So I was impressed there.
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  And they have a really unique system. So the first thing we saw was actually
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  a growing media facility manufacturing site that they've actually purchased.
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  It was going into bankruptcy and the company they were buying their growing media from.
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  So they bought it and sort of integrated their supply chain, as they say.
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  And so you can increase your profitability by doing
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  that and also you know get it on the cheap if it's bankruptcy and
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  it was a really interesting grow media for a
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  vertical farm they were they were getting starches in
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  and then fermenting it to
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  form like an acetate and then
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  this acetate this clear white very fluffy white acetate
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  was was was their grow media and then what they had to do
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  they were growing in gutters especially purpose obviously
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  they're not just housing gutters metal gutters
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  and then to prevent this grow media from growing everywhere
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  they actually have to heat it and melt the top
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  surface before they sow seeds into it and so
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  you can imagine this is very airy so almost like
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  a much more airy than even rockwool and
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  so great for aeration downside is
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  that it did tend to get everywhere so you could see them in the seeding room
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  you know with a dustpan and brush and a
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  hoover hoovering it up where it spills over the sides so it's not one solid
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  mass like you would with like a cocoa slab or a rock wall slab but still very
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  innovative and it didn't stay white forever it went a bit brown or black possibly
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  due to algae growing on it or oxidization i don't know.
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  But it was underneath the top surface it was still very white so a natural sort of fermented.
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  Starchy acetate was what they were growing in so that was really interesting and
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  then also what was interesting was these robotic robots that
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  would go through the the units and monitor
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  all the crops in the gutters and also irrigate
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  them at the same time and then take them off for harvest and
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  there was a robot for let me check i think it was
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  about 20 of the i think it was about 20 and
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  the gutters were about three meters wide so
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  they were they were doing they were monitoring germination they were
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  irrigating and they were sending it off for harvest and they would
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  pick the gutter up to irrigate it so that unlike normal nft
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  where it's sort of in place and a dripper just
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  drips into the the slab this one's actually they
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  pick up on one side and drip and then they monitor the
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  outflow on the other side so that was very interesting they
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  had automatic filling of the gutters with the grow media automatic seeding which
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  is interesting i think they had a different seeding machine for every different
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  type of plant because every every every seed is slightly different they were
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  doing about a thousand gutters a day and they had two operators so.
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  And this was one of the things that the people discussed
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  on the tour was you obviously build a hydroponic factory and it revolves a lot
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  of engineers building and designing the system then how do you transition from
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  a company that's very heavy on engineers and engineering to one that's on farming
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  and less on engineering expensive engineers and they seem to square that by.
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  Expanding into other territories and things like singapore a
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  lot of island nations and like this partnering with investors or.
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  Supermarkets over in these places to to
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  to expand and so that was good and
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  obviously there needs to be some maintenance of the equipment and with that
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  the system they had there they they said that
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  they were producing 60 kilograms per
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  meter squared per year of lettuce and 40
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  kilograms per meter squared per year for herbs and
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  35 kilograms per meter squared per year
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  for microgreens so 60 40 35 for
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  lettuce herbs and microgreens which is not blown out
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  the water amazing the world's best ever harvestable yields
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  which but ever claimed but they're certainly
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  good yields very good yields and far
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  higher than you would get in fields and believable and
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  something you could build an economical case around they were
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  growing one of the herbs they were growing was wasabi mustard and
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  i've grown a lot of wasabi never grown wasabi mustard
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  which is obviously not true wasabi but it did
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  taste very similar and had a really good kick nice delayed
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  kick that's what you want with wasabi it's not just an instant acrid taste
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  in the mouth like you get with mustard you want a delayed kick and that's what
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  it had obviously the thing that they're focusing on is we talked about previously
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  is like pesticide free no need to wash no emphasis on hydroponics really long
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  shelf life so 18 day shelf life for their lettuce which is crazy good.
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  And the led lights were water cooled which
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  seems to be fairly common now in vertical farms
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  i've got a brochure here from dim looks remember them the old dim looks well
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  they're still going and they are producing water cooled leds for vertical farming
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  so they do hybrid cooling passive air cooling as well so that's good to see
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  so water cooled leds were the way forward there and then,
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  heat exchangers for removing the heat from that water and reusing the heat and they added CO2.
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  And they moved air from one side of this massive factory
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  to the other and then eventually it would go to
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  an automated packing facility like you would see at
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  any other sort of facility like you would
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  at an outdoor vegetable producer with
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  the automated fillers and then lots of people cleaning
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  up and washing up the floors and things like this because that's something you
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  tend to not get away from you can't really automate at the
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  moment and packing is very
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  very labor intensive at any farm not to
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  be underestimated interestingly there was
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  a lot of discussion about spinach and arugula this is
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  an area where it seems a lot of vertical farms are struggling and
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  i'm going to do an episode about this in the future a lot
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  of research has been done on this at lettuce grow down in
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  bristol the aeroponic company and it's thought
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  that spinach might there's two things reasons
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  hypotheses as to why spinach
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  is difficult to grow vertical in vertical farms hydroponically is one is that
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  it's allelopathic and it sort of poisons itself and the other plants over time
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  and the other is that it produces so many root exudates that it builds up a
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  microbial sort of debt and it becomes anoxic and lack of oxygen in the growing media.
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  And the roots get covered in slime because the bacteria are growing. So that's interesting.
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  And then the reason why basil's not growing is because of the cold chain and
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  getting it to the supermarket and things like that.
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  It needs to be stored in a different way.
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  Than other herbs but if you are growing in
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  north america and you're in america you have to
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  be able to supply spinach if you're supplying lettuce
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  and herbs and microgreens so it is a big hurdle that people are trying to overcome
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  they are looking at other crops in the future like strawberries and tomatoes
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  that have added complications because you're going into flowers there and you
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  need pollination and it's not just leafy veg and things like this so that's interesting and.
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  And what else can we say?
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  They had some lovely offices, lots of places to chill out during their lunch
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  breaks, table football, even indoor football and hockey.
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  And they had an amazing display of all their locations around the world made
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  from that moss that you used to get for train sets back in the day.
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  And they did a map of the world with this moss on the wall. And I thought it
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  was really good. I thought, I could do that in my office.
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  So I'm going to have a try at that. so thank you very much to laura and the
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  team at growy it was a really interesting tour and,
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  yeah they said they were going to talk about they were going to do mushrooms in the
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  future so it'd be really interesting to look at
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  that because i don't know how you would grow it in
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  the same facility as those plants because you get all you
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  get terrible fungus gnats and things like this with with mushrooms but
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  obviously you don't need the lights as well so probably a dedicated facility for
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  growing mushrooms using their system so the
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  idea being that they could use their robots there for irrigation
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  picking monitoring and just as they do for plants just without the lights if
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  you've tried to grow mushrooms it'd be an interesting one for hydroponics daily
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  podcast indoor mushroom cultivation can you grow it without any peat or cocoa.
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  Is there a way of doing it almost like hydroponically? I don't know.
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  Want to research for another episode? Thank you very much for listening to this episode.
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  If you found it all useful and you're on Apple Podcast, please leave us a review.
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  If you're on any other podcast provider, a review doesn't really work. It's not really useful.
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  that's enough waffle for me until next time thank you very much for listening
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  to hydroponics daily goodbye.