Urban Crop Solutions
Urban Crop Solutions envisions to become the global independent reference of the fast-emerging vertical farming industry. Urban Crop Solutions creates fully automated indoor farming systems using LED lighting that are both efficient and effective under any given climate conditions. As a company Urban Crop Solutions focuses not only on development and production of these systems, but also on biological & plant technical research to relentlessly improve the Urban Crop Solutions growing systems and to provide customers with the best technology in terms of LEDs, substrates, nutrients and seeds.
Company details
Find locations served, office locations
- Business Type:
- Manufacturer
- Industry Type:
- Crop Cultivation
- Market Focus:
- Globally (various continents)
This company also provides solutions for other industrial applications.
Please, visit the following links for more info:
About us
That one day everyone, worldwide, will have access to affordable, healthy and tasty food. That by eliminating contaminated rainwater and pesticides from our crops, fewer allergies or other diseases will harm human beings. That everyone is able to cater to her or his own nutritional needs.
80% of the land suitable for agriculture is already in use. In 2050, a large majority of human kind will be living in cities and in total more than nine billion mouths will need to be fed. How can mankind deal with this problem without further damaging our planet?
That last question put us to work. Immediately, we were confronted with a number of additional questions. How to create a higher return on a limited growing surface? In 2011 we started a first experiment, a roof garden in Brussels. It turned out to be a succes! As from the third floor urban airborn toxins are diluted strongly and allow safe agriculture.
Our roof garden did well. But it could be better as our grim Belgian climate wasn’t helping yields. So we just built a small test-greenhouse. Growing surfaces stayed too limited to allow for good margins as building a greenhouse on a rooftop meant higher costs.
What if we could grow our crops in multiple layers? Well, you get shade. Solution: LED lights. We were excited about our ideas, met likeminded people and hence became acquainted with a similar project and forged ahead: Let’s create that dream and go for a better world!
History
Embryonic start: development and testing of first concepts.
Business Angel supports the idea and invests. Construction and test of the large proof-of-concept.
Urban Crop Solutions is officially founded in Beveren-Leie (Belgium). Start of biological research in our LED test lab.
Start development and production of our Urban Crop Solutions LED grow lights.
Initial biological results show a breakthrough in yields of our crops. Analyses by external labs show an increase of minerals and vitamins in the crops grown in our systems.
Engineering of our PlantFactory.
Engineering of our Urban Crop Solutions FarmPro.
International patent application. Further development of the Urban Crop Solutions FarmPro and PlantFactory.
Final development of the Urban Crop Solutions FarmPro and start of construction. Urban Crop Solutions PlantFactory reaches the final stages of development.
Construction of the PlantFactory starts.
Urban Crop Solutions is overwhelmed by market interest at IPM Dubai. Sales in BeNeLux kicked off.
Partnership with BelgoCatering. Research collaboration with a Belgian University.
Opening largest automated plant factory in Europe at Urban Crop Solutions in Beveren-Leie (Belgium) by Geert Bourgeois, the Minister-President of Flanders.
Belgium’s biggest commercial media company (Medialaan) uses the FarmFlex container for their restaurant.
Urban Crop Solutions wins the Gault&Millau Culinary Innovators Award.
Cooperation with sales agent in Spain. Urban Crop Solutions has a booth at GreenTech in Amsterdam.
Cooperation with sales agent in Vietnam. Speaker at the 6th National Conference on Agrochemicals in New Delhi (India)
Cooperation with sales agent in France.
Opening regional headquarters in Miami (US)
Cooperation with sales agents in Russia and Belarus and for the global emergency and relief markets.
Local representation in Japan by Nicolas Tsurukawa, our Japan Country Manager
Cooperation with sales agent in Egypt and Lebanon
Belgian high-end event organizer and caterer, Huis Van Wonterghem, started to grow their own herbs in our FarmFlex container.
Victory! Urban Crop Solutions wins FoodNexus Start-up Challenge in Belgium and starts cooperation with Chinese Sales Representatives.
