Grodan plugs make perfect sense in Swegreen’s circular in-store farm systems

In 2019, by combining expertise in technology and vertical farming, Swegreen launched an in-store ‘plant paradise’ to help even the smallest retailers and restaurants get fresh, great-tasting and nutritional vegetables onto consumers’ plates with minimum inputs and the smallest possible climate footprint. “Grodan is the best solution for us in our precisely controlled circular environment,” says Sepehr Mousavi, Chief Innovation Officer at Swegreen.

It is not unusual for fruit and vegetable production to be a high-tech activity nowadays, with industrial-scale, semi-automated greenhouses and precision growing becoming increasingly common. But in line with the company motto, Swegreen is focusing on the other end of the spectrum to help shape ‘the future of farming’. “We were keen to combine our knowledge and experience of both vertical farming with advanced digital technology, data analytics and world-leading techniques to grow fresh produce as close to the end consumer as possible,” says Sepehr Mousavi, Swegreen’s Chief Innovation Officer and Co-founder, who has been involved in vertical farming since the early 2010s. “We have developed small-scale indoor farming units of various sizes and production capacities so that customers can grow their own leafy greens and herbs – from seed to harvest – in their own retail stores, restaurants or hotels. Many supermarkets have in-store bakeries for bake-off products, so why not have your own in-store farm too?” he adds.

High-tech controlled environment

“We have so far devoted 70,000 R&D hours to developing a high-tech controlled environment that allows us to mimic the most optimal natural conditions indoors. With digital monitoring and artificial intelligence-based steering using our own growing recipes, our cloud platform constantly controls over a hundred different parameters, including lighting, temperature, humidity, irrigation, nutrient management and CO₂ levels. We can even create different conditions on different floors of the farm, enabling multiple types of crops to be grown in the same unit.”

Needless to say, every square metre of floorspace counts, whether in retail or hospitality outlets, but Swegreen has succeeded in developing modular in-store farms to suit even the smallest of customers. “Besides our unit with a 40-60m² footprint, we recently added smaller options. Our Saga model can be installed on as little as 12, 9 or even 7m² and still looks fantastic,” states Sepehr. The vertical farm units comprise several different storeys to facilitate the production of different crops, ranging from lettuces to herbs and spices. Thanks to the subscription set-up, customers don’t purchase the farm itself. Instead, they pay for the harvest capacity, which is usually between 2,000 to 15,000 plants a month, depending on the size of the unit.

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Plant paradise

So how does an in-store vertical farm work? “The plants pass through various phases within the unit. It starts with the customers sowing the seeds into stone wool plugs, which we source from Grodan. The plugs then go into the germination chambers and are subsequently moved through into the nursery and growing phases until the plants are ready for harvesting from the plugs,” explains Sepehr. “We provide training to operators beforehand. It helps if they enjoy working with crops, but to be honest they simply need to follow the instructions they receive through the online customer interface, which they can access on an iPad. Our smaller models only need around an hour of attention a day, and we take care of all the technical maintenance of course. Most operators love working with this little ‘plant paradise’, because it’s rewarding to see the results,” he continues.

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Sustainability and circularity

One of the key benefits of the in-store vertical farms is that they enable customers to cultivate high-quality, nutritional, and great-tasting produce around the clock, all year round, in a sustainable manner. “For example, this system eliminates the packaging, warehousing and transportation steps associated with the traditional agricultural industry, so you could say it’s a ‘zero logistics’ solution,” comments the Chief Innovation Officer. “Besides meaning that the products are super fresh when they hit consumers’ plates, the significantly shorter value chain reduces greenhouse gas emissions, plus nothing goes to waste because the harvest volumes are automatically calculated based on need and demand.”

To maximize not only the sustainability benefits but also the economic viability, the team at Swegreen were keen to design a circular system. “We strive to work with minimum inputs and ensure the smallest possible climate footprint by recovering everything, including heat, nutrients, and water. This gives us a very low water footprint – just over one litre per kilo of lettuce, for instance. And we even extract carbon and moisture from the air inside our customer’s premises, which is good for the plants and good for the consumers,” he says.