Signify reported that its horticulture LED lighting product was selected by GoodLeaf Community Farms in Canada to enhance food production. GoodLeaf grows and packs fresh greens year-round, operating a 4,000-square-metre indoor vertical farm in Ontario, Canada, which is now fully operational to supply some of the largest Canadian retail chains. The vertical farm is fully automated and equipped with the latest LED lighting technology for growing indoors. By providing a controlled environment, Philips Greenpower LED production modules enable GoodLeaf to shorten prod...

Vertical farming startup InFarm announced that it has raised US$170 million in the first close of a Series C funding round expected to reach $200 million. Led by LGT Lightstone, the first round included participation by investors Hanaco, Bonnier, Haniel, and Latitude, and was supported by existing Infarm investors Atomico, TriplePoint Capital, Mons Capital and Astanor Ventures. With a mix of equity and debt financing, the fresh capital infusion brings Infarm's total funding to date to more than $300 million, underscoring consumer and retailer appetite for I...

A new deal announced by Heliospectra, a Sweden based horticulture lighting technology provider, unveiled a new approach for achieving urban farming with LED grow lights. (Image: Heliospectra) Heliospectra reported that it has received an order from BBL Construction, who operates as a general contractor in the fields of commercial and institutional construction. According to Heliospectra, the two business partners are going to apply their expertise for several projects. The partnership might indicate that LED grow light and vertical farming facilities are now consi...

Germany-based euroLighting introduced two new broadband LEDs, GW3535U and GW1919U (COB), featuring a special spectrum for stimulating plant growth. The LEDs are focused only on specific plant species or growth phase, but can be widely used for vertical farm and more. . Modelled on sunlight, the plant LEDs reproduce the complete light spectrum and generate all wavelengths for each growth phase. This contrasts with LEDs, which only produce a violet spectrum of red and blue wavelengths. They cover the needs of the plant throughout its entire life cycle and thus con...

A Finland-based vertical farming company iFarm announced that it has raised US$ 4 million funding led by Gagarin Capital, who previously invested in the project. Other investors include Matrix Capital, Impulse VC, IMI.VC and more. With the funding, iFarm said it will deepen its automated indoor farming technology and extend cultivation experiments. (Image: iFarm) iFarm offers vertical farming solutions for growing greens, berries and vegetables. It aims to develop its iFarm Growtune tech platform that enables operations of multiple varieties of vertical farms ...

Global warming, climate changes and increasing world population are posing threats to the planet we are living on and putting pressure on food security. Leading lighting supplier Signify recently shares its viewpoint of how horticulture lighting based on LED technology can be an enabler for sustainable alternative food production. Signify suggests that using artificial lights in horticulture is one way to increase demand without driving up the resource usage. Grow lights can either supplement natural daylight or replace it entirely. Using them creates a controlled farming envi...

Vertical farming company Kalera from Florida, USA, has teamed up with the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences to conduct a study focusing on the effect of LED lighting by the end-of-production period. The results showed that by exposing lettuce to LED lighting before harvest, the nutritive value would increase. The new study, “Effect of End-of-Production High-Energy Radiation on Nutritional Quality of Indoor-Grown Red-Leaf Lettuce,” was published in HortScience on June 1, 2020. The research found that by using ...

SANANBIO, the joint venture of Sanan Optoelectronics and Chinese Academy of Science, announced that it will work on an indoor farming project in Qatar with its strategy partner Hode Agtech, an agri-tech company based in Guangdong, China. The two Chinese companies signed an agreement to develop vertical farming in Qatar to push agriculture transformation and restructure local agriculture supply chain. (Image: SANANBIO) Located in desert, Qatar is highly depending on food import especially for fresh vegetables. 90% of the vegetable consumed in Qatar co...

COVID-19 pandemic has led to lockdowns across the world with pause in business operation and production, resulting enormous impact globally. The technology industry, as one of the most affected field, not only needs to tackle the challenges brought by the coronavirus but also has to reconsider its strategies and operating plans for the post-pandemic world. As for the LED industry, since the supply chain mostly locates in Asia with the majority of production coming from China, plus high inventory due to oversupply in the past few years, the coronavirus epidemic has relatively s...

LettUs Grow is an indoor farming technology provider founded in 2015 in Bristol, UK. The company is speeding up the building of two vertical farm modules in the city of Bristol to help feed vulnerable communities during the Covid-19 outbreak. The company is also forming partnership with the food redistribution charity FareShare South West to ensure the produce gets to those who need it most. LettUs Grow expects the first of the new aeroponic farm modules to be ready to start producing fresh produce from mid-April, with the first harvests ready to be delivered in ten days...

A report of Thomson Reuters Foundation pointed out that cities lockdowns across the globe due to COVID-19 pandemic has made people to rethink the way they obtain food. Urban farming taking places in rooftops or other spare spaces in the city may be the solution for food supply. Horticulture LED lighting can thus become a critical supporting equipment for household or community farming applications. Panic buying has been reported in many countries during the coronavirus crisis. Kotchakorn Voraakom, the landscape architect who designed Asia's largest urban rooftop farm...

US-based container farm developer Freight Farms has raised US$15 million in Series B funding led by Ospraie Ag Science, an investment firm committed to supporting sustainable solutions. The investment round, which received participation from existing investor Spark Capital, brings the company's total funding to more than US$ 28 million. Freight Farms specialized in containerized vertical agriculture. Its product, named “Greenery,” incorporates hydroponic systems and LED lighting, enabling production of more than 500 varieties of crops at commercial s...

As population in urban areas across the world continues to grow, it is estimated that by 2050, 68 percent of the world population will live in cities. This demographic shift will lead to increased demand for food within cities, adding strain to the agricultural and food systems, particularly in developing countries. Urban agriculture, or urban farming, has long been viewed as an innovative component in diversifying the food system. A 2018 study of urban agriculture’s global potential found that fully implemented urban farms around the world could produce as much as 180 million m...

Signify announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Diamond Developers, a Dubai-based sustainable communities builder, as part of their mutual commitment to utilize creative and innovative technologies and solutions designed to promote sustainability. The agreement is a testament to a collaborative approach that seeks to accelerate innovation in sustainable energy and vertical farming. The agreement is built on two pillars of collaboration; the first pillar is centered on providing advanced lighting solutions and innovations that contribute to the city&...

The development of agricultural innovation has become more and more urgent than ever given the factors of increasing world population and global warming. As a result, vertical farming, which serves as a feasible solution to mass produce healthy and safe food, is getting increasingly popular across the world. Samsung Electronics has launched full-spectrum white-based horticulture LEDs to keep up with the trend of agriculture innovation and underline the advantages of applying LEDs for smart farming approaches such as vertical farm. (Image: Samsung) Smart farming refers t...

In recent years, the "plant factory" concept has been getting popular. Supporting Horticultural lighting has also been gaining attention. Chinese and international LED enterprises are both eager to participate in this lighting segment.

Vertical farming is still on the rise globally and with it the need for grow lights which produce minimal heat and can be positioned close to the plants. For vertical farming to be profitable, plants need to go from seed to supermarket shelves in ever decreasing time spans, while savings must be made at every turn. Next to infrastructural investments at the beginning, electricity and temperature regulation are some of the major costs for vertical farmers.

This “pinkhouse” at Caliber Biotherapeutics in Texas, grows 2.2 million plants under the glow of blue and red LEDs. The practice of vertical farming could potentially undergo a transformation that will make urban food centres more productive. Although many people believe vertical farming is unpractical, it is becoming increasingly popular as agricultural space becomes scarcer and people desire food produced closer to home. One major problem that arises with vertical farming practice is that of lighting. By stacking plants on top of each other, it creates sha...