Netherlands to have first large scale vertical farm

Staay Food Group is building the first of its kind vertical farm in Europe, in Dronten, the Netherlands, using Philips GreenPower LED horticultural lighting. The facility will serve one of Europe’s biggest supermarket chains and be used for testing and optimizing processes for future, larger vertical farms.

The 900m2 indoor vertical farm will have over 3,000m2 of growing space and produce pesticide-free lettuce. With upcoming stricter regulations on the residual pesticide levels in a bag or bowl of lettuce, retailers will need to provide exceedingly high quality, pesticide-free lettuce.

Staay, Philips Lighting and vegetable breeder Rijk Zwaan collaborated and undertook intensive research over the past three years to determine the best combination of lettuce varieties and growth recipes in order to improve crop quality and yields.

The vertical farms in Europe, using LED-based lighting have so far been research centers or specialist producers serving restaurants. The new Staay facility in Dronten will be the first in Europe to operate commercially, serving large scale retail. The facility will start operating in the second half of 2017.