In 2021, thirty hectares are grown worldwide in vertical farming as compared with 500 thousand hectares in technological greenhouses and 50 million hectares in open fields. It is, however, estimated that the global vertical farming market will reach 9.9 billion dollars by 2025, with growth rates exceeding an average of 20% per year. Innovative SMEs and start-ups are pursuing a digital revolution that is heading towards the European Green Deal: greater productivity with savings of water and fertilisers, energy from renewable sources and no pesticides. Agriculture goes mobile and urban: it can be housed in warehouses recovered from industrial areas now in disuse, it can be placed on roofs or in containers and transform the look of cities. In Italy, young businesses are leading this transformation in which modern distribution is a firm believer. And from the focus on salads, tomato and aromatic herbs, production is now extended to ever more innovative varieties, expanding to include small fruits, saffron and exotic fruits. And it looks to the future with the development of bioactive substances for the pharmaceutical industry.
The Planet Farms development plan is far from at a standstill, “Europe’s largest vertical farm”, after the Cavenago plant started up, at the doors to Milan, with a capacity of one tonne of products per day. A new round of investments (30 million) will partly go towards financing Plan 2, with two new production plants and a research and development site. The operation involved Red Circle Investments, Nuova Energia Holding and new investors, like the Azimut Group. “These are just some of those set to fund our projects in the next 18 months: two new plants, one in northern Italy and one in London, each doubling today’s dimensions, with the optimisation of the product within the processed products industry” – Daniele Benatoff, Co-Founder and Co-CEO together with Luca Travaglini, explains. “The pesto we will shortly be launching is one of the very first examples of the new line”. The R&D centre in Cavenago will help expand the range (today, the brand boasts five leafy products, the latest to be added was Rocket) and drive on the other branch of the company: product supply. In the future, our interest also lies in expanding to include red fruits. Planet Farms products are distributed by various brands (Esselunga, Il Viaggiator Goloso, Iper La Grande i, Unes and Il Gigante) as well as by certain Milan-based “dark stores” (Gorillas and Macai). “We have a great many interesting innovations currently under development with the large retail chain. In the meantime, we would like to do something more on the sales outlets and get to know our consumers a little better. We would like to take prices to a level that is not prohibitive for anyone, but we do not want to impoverish a product that has been created with no compromise on quality. Today, we are more efficient than we were a year ago and we will continue to improve; this is the challenge”.
Aeroponics enters the city’s fabric and aims to change the face of metropolises. Partners Genagricola, the long-standing Italian agricultural company of the Generali Group, and Ciofs-Fp Piemonte chose to place their trust in Agricooltur, the young Piedmont-based start-up, right from the outset. The business projects seek to develop along four main channels: Horeca, welfare and companies, retail and private customers. “Taking the concept of fresher food to large retail is just one of our aims” CEO Bartolomeo Marco Divià explains. We have run tests in various sales outlets of the main large retail chains. We are starting out with two giants in large retail and a highly innovative project. Thanks to our patents, we will be taking a live product, which the consumer can “harvest” directly from the display unit, just as though it were an aeroponic vegetable garden, inside the sales outlet and take it home, outside the refrigerator, until wanting to consume it. This storage method guarantees a unique flavour with unaltered organoleptic properties and no need for the cold chain”.
To date, more than 100 different varieties have been produced: from salads and common aromatic herbs, like salanova lettuce and classic basil, to fruit plants, like tomatoes, white aubergines and even edible flowers and sought-after exclusive products, like pineapple sage, cinnamon basil, Thai magic, red and microgreen and specific products trialled, like saffron and genepy. “For the `business’ world, we have launched projects with international players, like the Dussmann Group, also offering our product in company canteens. We also work with real estate, with the first development of an indoor high-tech vegetable garden created in the new Forest in Town construction, the work of the Building Group”.
From a technical point of view, tests continue beyond the technological frontier, which goes beyond traditional aeroponics: fog-ponics, namely a system of high-pressure nebulisation that can further reduce water use. “Our technical sector is also developing tailor-made aeroponic systems integrated into the urban fabric: between the buildings, on the roofs, in homes, in basements and even in industrial warehouses. Our solutions can be adjusted to fit in any environment”.
This year, the production of Fri-El Green House should reach 13 thousand tonnes. Thirty-one hectares of hyper-technological iron-glass greenhouses, 220 km of LED lights for winter production, a 365-day-a-year production site and 100% green energy from biogas plants: these are just some of the virtuous facts characterising the Ostellato (Fe) business in its production of H2Orto brand tomatoes (vine, cocktail and cherry tomatoes, as well as peppers and cucumbers) in hi-tech hydroponic growing systems. The company, whose workforce is made up 41% of women aged an average of 34 years old, is an investee of the Fri-El Group, one of the main Italian producers of electricity from renewable sources (wind power, biomass and biogas): the greenhouses are partly heated with the hot water produced by the biogas plants, supplied by agricultural-origin by-products. “We were looking for a smart, environmentally-sustainable way not to lose the heat generated by our biogas electrical plants and we are now sure we have found it: flanking our plants with technological greenhouses for tomato production” Florian Gostner, CEO of Fri-El Green House, explains. Established in 2015 with a surface area of 1.5 hectares, over the years it has been extended through to the 31.1 hectares of greenhouses it boasts in 2022. The growth plan looks to reach 60 hectares. “Turnover from 2015 to date has shown a strong rise and this is due to the continuous growth of the production surface area and the switch away from mass products (classic vine tomatoes) to premium products (cocktail, date and cherry tomatoes). From the 13 million euros of turnover booked in 2020, for 2022 we are now forecasting a value of 31 million euros and tomato production of 13 thousand tonnes”. H2Orto tomatoes have been certified as nickel-free and are grown without the use of weed-killers and glyphosate. They are available on the market from leading large retail chains in Italy, Austria and Germany. “We fully intend to expand the range of product varieties and are currently running tests to grow exotic fruits, like papaya, mango, ginger and turmeric. Our upcoming challenge is to achieve completion of the energy transition by 2025. We want to become independent of fossil fuels and zero our CO2 energy balance”. H2Orto has chosen to use only sustainable, recyclable packaging for all its products: from corrugated cardboard to R-pet packaging and trays.
Next June, Ono Exponential Farming will be taking part in the New York Future Food-Tech, where it will be describing its “made in Italy” agrobotic revolution at the Indoor AgTech Innovation Summit hosted by the “Big Apple”, an event that brings together the very best of innovation in indoor growing globally. The aim of the Onoex farms is not to develop mass production plants but rather carefully-balanced systems, where there is no need to produce large volumes of plants to make up for the huge investment in infrastructure. Between the end of this year and the first half of 2023, the Ono Exponential Farming iHub should be created in Verona. And a series of installations is already planned, set to cover the east and west coasts of the USA, another two plants in Europe, at least one in the Arab countries (Qatar, Arab Emirates) and one in Singapore. “It is an important investment” – Thomas Ambrosi explains, CEO of Ono Exponential Farming – “with massive production capacity that is highly differentiable thanks to the modularity of the Onoex system, and which will considerably lower the entry step for everyone, farmers or businesses, wishing to start working in the world of technological agriculture”. This year has seen Ono Exponential Farming complete development of the robotic systems of modules and continue its development of new growth algorithms and artificial intelligence. “The new technologies implemented regard the systems by which to reduce energy consumption for the LED lighting (-70%) and climate control of the growth chambers (-60%). A technique is currently being validated, which will result in the complete circularity of the energy and emissions cycle. Thanks to the new design of the machines and the possibility of developing plants standing up to 16 metres high without human intervention, we are now obtaining triple growing density than the most well-known vertical farms, with a cost per square metre cultivated that comes in 73% lower and a 95% reduction in the cost of labour”. Production is going beyond classic leaf salads. “We now have great production faith in aromatic herbs and for months now have been testing the continuous production of strawberries, with incredible nutritional and organoleptic results. Large retail is decidedly interested in the products we can grow in our farms; our farmer customers are often already supplying the largest chains. We have introduced plants for cosmetics, nutraceutics and those useful for extracting pharmacological molecules into our productions. But the real revolution will also come about thanks to plants that can be used as natural bioreactors, like tobacco, to produce specific medicines. Here, we have reached productivity values that are 400 times higher than in a laboratory. All this without using any phytopharmaceutical products and just 2% water”.
In May, Agricola Moderna will have been on the market for two years with its pilot plant of Melzo in hydroponics. “These two years have been essential to growth: they have allowed us to perfect our technology yet further, along with the industrial process and get to know the market and above all, our consumers. The team is growing; we are now 18 in all, amongst agronomists, engineers, software engineers, data Scientists and marketing experts. Over the next 12 months, we will probably double in number”, the Co-Founder, Pierluigi Giuliani, says. Today, Agricola Moderna products are distributed in Carrefour and Cortilia, with which important partnerships have been established for the future. The products on the market are the Lattughino biondo (Lollo Bionda), Baby lattuga (a mixture of small green lettuces), the Japanese Mix (Japanese spinach, Wasabi mustard, green cos lettuce, tatsoi), Spicy mix (curly mustard, green cos lettuce, red mustard) and basil. Research & development has finalised other products too, like Rocket and other crispy mixes with even more decisive flavours, which will soon be ready for marketing. “In a few months, we will be starting construction on our new plant, which will have 11,000 square metres of growing area and will start production in 2023. It will be fully automated and produce more than 600 tonnes of products per year. We are closing important synergies to seek to power the production plant as much as possible with renewable sources: our aim is to reach 100%”.
Zero, a hi-tech company based in Pordenone, is amongst the excellent enterprises invited by Friuli-Venezia Giulia to take part in the Regional Day held at the Italian Pavilion of the Expo 2020 Dubai; it will be developing mainly innovative products for fresh-cut produce for private label. It is a new strategy that follows the test phase of the Zero Farms brand product at Eurospesa (Zero has also been chosen by Barilla to produce basil and other micro-vegetables for its ready-made sauces). Founded in 2018, it has announced that it will be developing the Future Farming District, “Italy’s most important vertical farming project, both in terms of investments and covered surface area”. An industrial archaeological complex in Capriolo, in the Oglio Park, in the province of Brescia, will be requalified for the development. The complex covers a surface area in excess of 200 thousand square metres, with total covered areas measuring approximately 25 thousand square metres. The project involves total initial investments of more than 60 million euros for the first phase and another 40 million for the second. Completion is expected by end 2025, for a grow capacity of 1500 tonnes per year. It will be an integrated circular ecosystem: it will exploit local production of clean energy from renewable sources thanks to the industrial collaboration with the partner Iseo Idro, founded by a group of entrepreneurs from Alto Adige, owners of a system of hydroelectric plants situated along the Oglio River and the property area of the District. Zero has developed a patented proprietary technology. Salads, aromatic herbs, microgreen and, in the future, strawberries and red fruits will all be grown using aeroponic systems. With the ultimate aim of creating the very first vertical molecular farm to use plants as bioreactors to develop biosubstances for pharmaceutical use. “To combat high prices, Zero is focussing on a democratic product that is progressively more and more accessible; this is the challenge. The aim is to reach the shelves with a price that is in line with a good organic products; this is our positioning”, CEO Daniele Modesto, explained.
After the first few tests run in the sales outlets of Coop Lombardia, LocalGreen, a start-up created in 2019, continues with the start-up of its aeroponic plant in the Pavia area, today under construction, which will allow for the production of more than 25 thousand bags of ready-to-eat salad a week. It will house 1500 m2 of growing area, as well as the surface used for germination and plant growth during the early vegetative stages. It will be extremely automated, releasing four different products to the market, including three mixes and a single-lettuce product. The investment (with the plants fully up-and-running) will come to 15 million and allow the company to present itself to a larger audience of consumers and gain recognition as a reliable company producing high quality products at competitive prices. “We supply our customers with a professional response, a short chain product that is fresh, local and sustainable, highly customised and offer an unmatched retailer service”. Future projects aim to increase the product portfolio and reduce production costs. “We want to work to increase volumes and provide our consumers with a product that is unrivalled in terms of quality, at a price that is accessible to the general public. The R&D team is working very hard and we will soon be obtaining recipes that are ever-more environmentally-friendly, along with new products”.
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Vertical farming reaches schools
Planet Farms and Esselunga have launched an educational course on vertical farming dedicated to secondary school students in Milan and province. The project is divided up into two phases. The first (from March to May 2022) involved six schools in Milan and 320 students in 14 laboratories; the second will start with the new school year. The training involves the intervention by qualified educators, who will, together with Planet Farms, guide the teaching laboratories. Each school will feature a structure installed on multiple levels, equipped with a hydroponic grow system, designed to allow students to experience vertical farming first-hand, from seeding through to harvest.
From salad to pharmaceuticals
From the focus on salads, aromatic herbs, microgreen and tomatoes, vertical farming production is gaining more and more ground and expanding to include an increasing number of vegetables and fruit plants: peppers, aubergines, strawberries and small fruits. It is also trialling high added value crops: saffron, ginger, turmeric; exotic fruits like papaya and mango; or more unusual ones, like medical hemp, tobacco and edible flowers, with a possible extension to include potatoes, mushrooms and micro algae. But the real business of the future may be the production of active biosubstances for the pharmaceutical industry.
