Plenty Unlimited Inc. has opened a new farm in Richmond, Va., to grow indoor, vertically farmed strawberries for Driscoll’s.
The Plenty Richmond Farm is designed to produce more than 4 million pounds of strawberries annually on less than 40,000 square feet by growing vertically on 30-foot-tall towers, according to a news release. The farm will exclusively grow Driscoll’s strawberries, the first of which will be available in early 2025.
“Partnering with Plenty for the launch of the Richmond Farm allows us to bring our premium strawberries closer to consumers in the Northeast, the largest berry consumption region in the U.S.,” Driscoll’s CEO Soren Bjorn said in the release. “By combining our 100 years of farming expertise and proprietary varieties along with Plenty’s cutting-edge technology, we can deliver the same consistent flavor and quality our customers love — now grown locally. This new innovative farm is a powerful step forward in continuing to drive category growth in new ways for our customers and consumers.”
Plenty said its patent-pending modular growing system is flexible enough to support a variety of crops and growing the fruit on vertical towers enables uniform delivery of nutrients, good airflow and more intense lighting to increase yield with consistent quality.
Plenty controls the temperature, light and humidity of this farm through propriety software and uses artificial intelligence to analyze more than 10 million data points each day across its 12 grow rooms. The company also said it uses a patent-pending method to evenly distribute airflow across the strawberry flowers to create a more efficient and effective pollination than using bees.
“This farm is a model for the positive impact climate-agnostic agriculture can have, and proof that vertical farming can deliver the crop diversity, scaled and local production needed to future-proof the global food system,” said Plenty CEO Arama Kukutai. “The Plenty Richmond Farm is the culmination of 200 research trials over the past six years to perfect growing strawberries with consistent peak-season flavor indoors year-round. Driscoll’s sets an incredibly high bar for the quality of its berries and we’re excited to join forces to consistently deliver an ultra-premium Driscoll’s strawberry year-round.”
