Exhibitor press releases

Vertically Urban is thrilled to unveil its latest horticultural lighting innovations: Horti-Blaze Tunable and Odyssey Tunable, designed specifically for vertical farms and glasshouses. Representing the culmination of extensive research and development efforts at their UK-based factory, these products incorporate advanced technology that revolutionizes the way growers control light spectra, providing unparalleled customization tailored to each crop's unique needs.

Skytree, a pioneering climate tech company dedicated to advancing innovative CO2 capture and reutilization solutions, today announced it has been selected to receive European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator funding, securing a €2.5 Million non-dilutive grant, which brings the total funds raised by Skytree in 2023 to €13 million. In addition, EIC’s accelerator commits to participate in the next round of funding, a Series A scheduled for Spring 2024.

Urban Crop Solutions embraces the challenge of enhancing space efficiency in agriculture and horticulture. The 12-meter-high vertical greenhouse of Agrotopia in Belgium becomes the remarkable stage for an innovative project marking a significant transformation in the field of vertical horticulture. The project’s objective is to provide effective solutions for space utilization, positioning Flanders as a leader in innovation and sustainability within the agri-food industry.

Ook in 2024 zet de groei van het ledenbestand van AVAG zich door. Het platform voor bedrijven die actief zijn in de internationale glastuinbouw verwelkomde onlangs Verkade Klimaat, dat onder de naam Verkade Climate tuinbouwprojecten uitvoert. 'Met de aansluiting bij de branchevereniging willen we laten zien dat we staan voor kwaliteit en service', zegt Rosanne Brabander, bij het bedrijf verantwoordelijk voor marketing.

LettUs Grow is embarking on a research project with Albotherm, a fellow Bristol-based agri-tech company, to investigate the impact of intuitive shading technology on glasshouse productivity and energy efficiency.

A pioneering project led by LettUs Grow - in collaboration with Fotenix, Rothamsted Research, CHAP, and Vertically Urban - is set to revolutionise the Total Controlled Environment Agriculture (TCEA) landscape in the UK. The Advanced Crop Dynamic Control (ACDC) project aims to develop highly energy-efficient and sustainable indoor farming systems through image-based analysis, AI and software that optimises the growing environment based on plant health and dynamic market environments.

Many years of experience, research, and investments have gone into developing and manufacturing the Ellepot System, and we secure this work through product patents. This ensures that we can deliver the highest quality to our customers. The Ellepot sleeve system gives growers a fully automated system with a unique new precision seeding technology.

Urban Crop Solutions, a leading provider of advanced vertical farming solutions, is proud to announce that they have started a collaboration and delivered an advanced indoor vertical farm installation to BASF, a global leader in the agriculture and chemical industry. This installation will be used to accelerate the development by BASF of different projects related with new agricultural solutions in a more sustainable way. The cooperation foresees also the support of the plant science division of Urban Crop Solutions to the research team of BASF that is working on the development of new products.

Seamlessly Merging Climate Control and Autonomous Greenhouse Technologies Priva and Koidra, two world leaders in greenhouse growing systems, are excited to announce an innovative new partnership.

Koidra proudly announces its distinguished position in the Homegrown Innovation Challenge, a transformative endeavor to elevate Canada’s agricultural sector.

The Challenge?: Finding a better lighting solution for cannabis growth capable of providing even lighting to all parts of the plant. The Hortiv Solution: After a number of steps combining development and on-site trials together with the GREENKOM team, Hortiv delivered lamps with the special features needed for more efficient production of medical cannabis. The new lamps require less power, produce less heat, and provide more precise lighting. The Result: Thanks to even lighting, the plants’ production rate is higher, their flowers are more uniform, and all this takes place with lower power consumption for both lighting and cooling.

The Challenge: To find the right lighting to be installed inside the growing device, that will be suitable for home use - safe and efficient. The Hortiv Solution The HORTIV solution was chosen for 2 reasons, 1. The strong local presence of the distributor and its ability to give quick and comprehensive customer support 2. A good cost - effective ratio The Result: AGWA’s customers are enjoying a great product. Precise lighting at a reasonable price plays a great role in the final result - all features which competitors were not able to offer.

The Challenge: To find lightning fixtures that are suitable for different types of vertical growing systems and expand the range of crops that can be efficiently cultivated this way. The Hortiv Solution: Hortiv’s systems and support gave Vertical Field the flexibility it required, with more adaptable and adjustable equipment and solutions, by performing trials for the particular needs of vertical farming together. The Result: Vertical Field is now able to extend its research and development efforts with lighting that is appropriate for different types of crops and stages of development.

The Challenge: Plantae’s researchers were looking for a system that would allow flexibility when implementing varied lighting regimes in the growth rooms in order to study the reaction of plants to different growing conditions. The Hortiv Solution: The answer was to install two systems in parallel: The first steup provides flexibility for Plantae to test and find the optimal conditions required for growing the various tissue cultures in their collection. The second one, in which the composition of the light is predetermined and supports previously calibrated plant tissue culture growing protocols. The Result: Based on these observations, Plantae formulated precise work protocols needed to reliably produce a wide range of plants in cultures.

The Challenge: While building its new tissue culture lab, RCK was looking for lighting with the sufficient spectrum and wavelength, but that would not take up too much space or emit too much heat. The Hortiv Solution: HORTIV’s controllable product solutions covered the entire range of parameters that RCK required for its research, and did so despite space constraints. The Result: The lab is new and so far a solution has been found to control the lighting environment for its research experiments, which no company other than Hortiv was able or willing to develop for them.

Beaulieu Technical Textiles will set a new standard in woven horticultural groundcovers for indoor and outdoor nurseries with its launch of RECOVER, a long-lasting, strong and more sustainable solution for weed control. To be unveiled on Beaulieu’s debut at GreenTech Amsterdam this 13th-15th June, the innovative interwoven polypropylene (PP) groundcover has been specifically designed to address nurseries’ unmet needs for increased durability and longevity, and to deliver reduced CO2 footprint thanks to its 30% recycled content.

Even in these times of turbulent markets and economic challenges, and perhaps we should say especially in these turbulent times, we are convinced that our future must be absolutely sustainable. Although sustainability is often talked about in terms of challenge, for B.I.G., sustainability represents one of the biggest business opportunities of our time. The concept of sustainability presents us with inspiration to develop new business models and new innovative products, and to improve our talent recruitment. The benefits just keep on adding up. That is why we chose ‘Shaping sustainable living, together' as our raison d'être.

For many years, the company DeruNed in Bleiswijk has developed, produced, and supplied natural solutions for the professional horticultural sector. One of the newest products they developed themselves is called Root Energize. The enzymes it contains ensure an accelerated decomposition of root remnants in inert substrates, such as rockwool and perlite. They are not or only barely present in these substrates. Along with extending the lifespan of the substrate, Root Energize creates the conditions for optimal plant growth and lowers pressure from plant diseases.

Understanding how crops respond to environmental stress is crucial to developing high performance varieties and growing crops profitably. No one knows this better than at Enza Zaden, who constantly strive to produce resilient varieties at scale for growers all over the world. Gardin is thrilled to announce that, after the completion of a successful trial in September 2022, Enza Zaden has the intention to expand our collaboration across their facilities in the Netherlands and Spain in 2023.

AlfaTech will become the integration and service partner for the products of Urban Crop Solutions (UCS) in the South East Asian region. After an already first successful joint project for the National University of Singapore, both technology companies will now work together for indoor vertical farming projects.

Urban Crop Solutions has been named the fourth Most Innovative company in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa by Fast Company. The only indoor farming company to be named in this category, it stood out for the launch of PharmSpee – a platform enabling the use of plants, instead of animal cells or synthetic materials, for the production of ingredients for the biopharmaceutical, life science, cosmetics, or feed industry. Aside from lowered production costs, the use of the PharmSpee platform drastically reduces production cycles, and time-to-market.

In a further extension of their service offering, Urban Crop Solutions has launched an e-shop to better support their existing, and new customers in the day-to-day as well as long-term operation of their indoor farming businesses. Everything that an operator needs – from seeds and substrates to sensors and container parts – can be ordered via the e-shop. The e-shop is a separate and additional offering, and customers do not have to be an operator or owner of a UCS installation to use this service.

Urban Crop Solutions (UCS) and Dr Rudi Pauwels will set up a research centre on indoor farming applications in southern Spain. Research at the centre will focus on the impact of climate change on crops in Southern Europe, while working on optimising the nutrient content. For UCS, this new research centre complements its existing research centre in Belgium. Dr Rudi Pauwels will also advise UCS on its plant molecular farming activities.

The Ultra-Clima is a semi-closed greenhouse concept with 5 key starting points. In the coming months we will provide an explanation of each individual starting point or one of the components. This article is about saving energy using this technology.

The Saudi Arabian company Dava Agricultural is further expanding its greenhouse acreage. The company Dava, owned by the Al-Batal family, has signed a contract for a new semi-closed greenhouse of 23 hectares to be built with their long-term partner Debets Schalke. Dava’s greenhouse complexes located in the Al-Kharj region will soon cover more than 110 hectares.