A Scottish agri-tech business has just unveiled its first indoor vertical farm demonstration facility in Perthshire.
The firm behind it, Intelligent Growth Solutions Ltd (IGS) says the facility at the James Hutton Institute is arguably the most technically advanced indoor farm in the world.
The unit uses patented power and communications technologies to address the key challenges facing the indoor farming industry.
The cost of power and labour, as well as the inability to produce consistent and quality produce at scale, have inhibited vertical farming’s expansion to-date. However, the Perthshire site has been designed to overcome these barriers while also significantly lowering the cost of production.
Potential
With global market growth predicted at 24% over the next three years, the opportunities for IGS are substantial, with over 95% of its technology solutions expected to be exported.
Approximately 150 jobs are expected to be created in by 2021 in areas such as software, data, engineering, robotics and automation.
Vertical farming offers huge reductions in water wastage, the elimination of the use of pesticides and a huge reduction in food miles. It allows produce to be grown locally and on demand, which could reduce fresh food waste by up to 90%.
The unit uses artificial intelligence and other technical solutions to reduce energy usage by 50% and labour costs by 80% compared with other indoor growing environments. It also can produce yields of up to 200% more than that of a traditional greenhouse.
David Farquhar, IGS chief executive said: “The opportunity to unveil Scotland’s first vertical farm, and arguably the world’s most technically advanced indoor facility, is a hugely exciting one for the whole team.
“As a Scottish-founded and led team, we have captured horticultural, engineering and software skills from within Scotland to make this business flourish.
“The global horticulture market is crying out for new approaches to enhancing food production in terms of yield, quality and consistency. It is also searching for ways to reduce power consumption and labour costs and our technology has been designed to fundamentally address this.
“Annual industry spend exceeds $10 billion with compound annual growth of 24%. We are well positioned to help our customers profitably expand their businesses on the back of this growth.”
Prof. Colin Campbell, chief executive of James Hutton Institute added: “There are genuine potential game-changing opportunities both for new and conventional horticultural and agricultural systems that can come from our collaboration.
“The fact that Scottish innovation and Scottish science have again led the world with something that has massive economic potential locally, as well as globally, with benefits for the environment due to more efficient energy, water and nutrient use is hugely exciting.
“The collaboration has proved to be a major strength in developing proposals for a new research facility at Invergowrie called the Advanced Plant Growth Centre and we look forward to helping establish Scotland as the lead science centre for this new industry.”
