From Know-How to Grow-How
We сombine Factory Engineering
and Indoor Plant Biology
Urban Crop Solutions offers end-to-end solutions for Indoor Vertical Farming. It all starts with the crop: your crop and the needs of your market. Based on 5 years of research and real-life trials in our own research center, we help you select the right plant varieties with the right growth recipe for the requirements of your crop.
We design, manufacture, and install automated Plant Factories that can scale to the needs of your business. We help you in your journey to yield and support your first harvest. With us, you’ll be able to grow any crop under LED light anywhere on the planet, year-round. Let us join you in your Journey to profit.
Why a Plant Factory?
HYPER LOCAL
Grow where you sell.
Save food miles and reduce
food waste
NO PESTICIDES
Crops are grown in an enclosed
environment so there is no
need
for pesticides
or herbicides
95% LESS WATER
Water transpired by the crops
is captured and fed back
to the crops
FOOD SECURITY
Available year-round
with consistent quality,
independent of weather
or climate change
ADAPTABLE
Grow crops in different climates,
adapt your crop mix to your
customer’s needs
FRESH AND HEALTHY
Consistent high quality,
taste,
freshness, nutritional
value
and active ingredients
For your success (ROI), there are 4 main drivers
1. PLANT GROWTH RECIPES
Highest
Net Yield
The output that goes to your customer
2. FACTORY ENGINEERING
Lowest
investment cost
per m2 or sq.ft of growing surface
3. SMART AUTOMATION
Lowest labor
and electricity
per kg or lb of output
4. CUSTOMER FOCUS
End-To-End
Support
We assist you in your Journey to Profit
Our Solutions
FACTORY ENGINEERING
Large Scale Plant Factory
Custom Engineered inside a new or existing stand-alone building. Capex @ approx. 2750 EUR/m2 (255 EUR/sq.ft) or other option
ModuleX Plant Factory
Scale up from 2 to 64 Grow Modules at 86m2 (926 sq.ft) growing surface per Module. Capex @ 1800 EUR/m2 (167 EUR/sq.ft)
FarmPro Container Farm
With 68.6m2 (738 sq.ft) growing surface, output up to 5000 kg (11,023 lbs)/yr. Low labor cost with 2 automated Crop-to-person carousels.
FarmFlex Container Farm
With a growing surface up to 51m2 (549 sq.ft), it offers high flexibility in crop mix for research applications.
INDOOR PLANT BIOLOGY
We offer you our Indoor Biology Research
We offer you research and “Grow-How” in our 10 controlled environment growth chambers, 1 FarmPro and 1 ModuleX for crop cultivar screening, nutrient formulations, plant cultivation techniques, LED light spectrum research, hydroponic irrigation and substrate development. The ‘Grow-How’ of our scientists with 30+ years of experience, enables us to serve customers with the support of 200+ recipes.
ModuleX: the modular Plant Factory
Featuring the BenchCarousel (patent pending)
SCALABLE
Start up small. Minimize your initial CAPEX, and build your showcase farm with a ModuleX-2.
As you develop new routes to the market around you, when you attract more customers, then scale-up in a smart way.
Add Grow Modules as you need, with a fast 12-week lead time. And grow your business to a ModuleX-64 and beyond...
ADAPTABLE
Each Grow Module has an independent ClimateZone and Nutrient system.
Grow Genovese Basil in the ‘Italian' ClimateZone, and grow microgreens the Grow Module right next to it, in a ‘Belgian’ Climate with a separate optimized nutrient mix. Adapt your mix of crops to the needs of your customers.
EFFICIENT
Reduce your labor cost while each growing bench comes to you within 90 seconds with the push of a button; made possible by the BenchCarousel.
Reduce your CAPEX to 1800 EUR/m2 (167 EUR/sq.ft), because 1 Grow Module contains an industry-best 86m2 (926 sq.ft) growing surface. Achieve your maximum yield when your crops receive 100% of the light, (almost) 100% of the time.
Indoor Vertical Farming provides compelling solutions to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals: waste less food and support local farmers (Goal 2), avoid wasting water (Goal 6), decent work (Goal 8). However, only a few early adopters are making a profit.
At Urban Crop Solutions, we have worked tirelessly to find a sensible solution to many open issues. Based on the experiences of the customers of our FarmPro and FarmFlex, we have designed a 2nd generation Plant Factory from the ground up. And we’ve come up with a concept that ‘simply makes sense’.
Starting up and financing a proof-of-concept is difficult and high-risk (Scalable). Selling the unique benefits of indoor farmed crops creates new opportunities and changing customer needs (Adaptable). And finally, our innovative BenchCarousel minimizes labor costs, increases growing surface for the investment while maximizing crop yields by allowing the crops to absorb light 100% (Efficient).
We hope you value our contribution to Vertical Farming: join us for the next phase of this exciting technology!
Indoor Biology Research
We operate 10 smart climate-controlled research labs,
1 full scale FarmPro & 1 ModuleX Grow Module
R&D Equipment
We can mimic any climate on earth within our labs. To validate yields and improve plant growth recipes in our factories, we also operate a full-scale FarmPro container farm, and a ModuleX Grow Module.
Our main activities are crop variety screening, enhancing nutrient formulations and perfecting plant cultivation techniques. We have developed our own LED light technology, and continue our experiments to enhance plant response to LED light spectrum and intensity.
We think inside the box
We don’t believe in standard solutions. Why? Every single climate creates different issues. That is why we reconfigure all our systems to match your products’ requirements and your business operations. We carefully select the components you need to achieve the most effective configuration for your situation. We have the highest precision when it comes to controlling all environmental variables : temperature, humidity, airflow, LED light, air flow, irrigation and nutrient formulation.
Applications and Industries
Retail
Plant processing
Restaurants
and food service
Plant
based medicine
and nutraceuticals
Universities
and research institutes
Nurseries
and floriculture
25+ Plant Factories
USA, Canada, Europe, Asia
IKEA
(Sweden)
As part of its sustainability program, a FarmPro has been operating for IKEA’s restaurant division on the parking lot of its store in Malmö, Sweden.
They grow fresh, healthy vegetables ‘from farm-to-plate’. Food-miles from the parking lot to the kitchen have been reduced from 2000 km (1243 mi.) down to 50 m (164 ft).
Kaercher Family Farms
(USA)
Matt Kaercher has a vision to grow fresh greens in the subtropical Florida climate and deliver healthy food to local restaurants.
He now operates 3 FarmPro and 1 FarmFlex container farms, and is looking to expand.
Crops On Mars
(Research consortium, Belgium)
A consortium led by Puratos, a global bakery supply company, has set out to research whether people can bake bread on Mars. Dwarf wheat is now grown on lava rock as a substrate.
Urban Crop Solutions developed and installed 2 custom FarmLab research farms at Puratos’ headquarters near Brussels, Belgium.
Banana Nursery
(University of Leuven, Belgium)
A custom FarmLab research farm is used as a nursery to grow new banana (Musa) cultivars in a controlled environment. After growing to 50 cm (1,6 ft) they are checked for resistance to climate change.
Promising trees are transported to the African highlands to ensure the future of the local farmers.
Your Journey to Profit
We provide End-To-End support
Educate
FEASIBLE
BUSINESS CASE?
1Intake conversation to understand your unique local situation, crops, customer needs
2Review of your business case to see if it's profitable
Ready?
BUSINESS PLAN
1Optimizing your mix of crops
2Calculation of your ROI
Set...
TRAINING
ON-SITE STARTUP
1Training (at our HQ or remote / COVID-compliant)
2Biological and technical checklist
3Startup at your location
Grow!
TECH & BIO SUPPORT
1ST HARVEST
1Continued support: technical, biological and maintenance
2Data intelligence: growth data collection and growth recipe optimization
The journey to a profitable indoor farm is long and confusing. We at Urban Crop Solutions want to help you. Which crops are profitable? Which yields? How many kg/m2 or lbs/sq.ft output do I get? How much leaf loss? Quality loss? Which part of my plant can I use for my particular application? …
We have the answer to all those questions. Learn more about the differences in yield & the potential pitfalls in indoor vertical farming by downloading our detailed crop guide.
Partners in our exciting journey
They want to reinvent themselves by crossing conceptual borders.
They want to complete each other as much as they want to compete.”
― Steven Johnson (Where Good Ideas Come From - 2010)
