Indoor vertical grower Oishii says a new solar-powered farm is its most technologically advanced one yet, designed to grow 20 times more strawberries and help the company expand into East Coast markets.
Located in Phillipsburg, N.J., the 237,500-square-foot Amatelas Farm — named for the Japanese goddess of the sun — runs on renewable energy and represents a “more efficient paradigm for indoor agriculture,” according to a news release. The farm’s harvests are grown primarily with solar power sourced from an adjacent 50-acre solar field.
Innovation and automation
Amatelas Farm features individual farm units, which are each home to 250 moving racks of Oishii’s Koyo strawberries. Every rack is stacked with eight growing levels (up from five in Oishii’s second-generation farms) that move from the warmth of day to the coolness of night on a 24-hour cycle, the release said.
Oishii says while some vertical farms grow produce on static, immobile racks, this moving architecture automates the growing process and enables bees, robots and farmers to work together to grow more berries in the same footprint.
Built in a repurposed plastics manufacturing plant, the farm features next-generation LED lights that use 14% less energy per plant, according to the release. The facility’s multimillion-dollar water purification system has eight times more capacity than the older Oishii farms, allowing it to recycle the majority of the water it uses today, the company says.
“At Oishii, we run towards problems once thought to be impossible to solve. In just two years, we’ve developed technological breakthroughs now in use at Amatelas Farm that make our growing process significantly more efficient, yet just as delicious,” Oishii co-founder and CEO Hiroki Koga said in the release. “Our desire to maintain this exponential rate of innovation is driven by a deeply human need: We see vertical farming as a critical part of the solution to our failing agriculture system. Our new farm represents a huge step forward in our mission to grow food that’s better for people and the planet.”
Nearly 50 robots work nonstop at Amatelas Farm to ensure berries are picked at the peak of ripeness and optimize operations over time, according to the release. The company says its proprietary robots capture over 60 billion data points annually, which are used to monitor and adjust the environmental variables of each farm unit.
By pairing machine vision with machine learning, Oishii says its farms get incrementally more efficient, improving metrics like pollination success and harvest predictability.
Oishii says Amatelas Farm also enables it to scale the brand’s impact, with the company having already made more than 100 hires in the Lehigh Valley region, creating jobs for engineers, farm operators and facility managers, among others.
Growing production
With the space to grow more than 20 times the number of berries from its previous facility, the farm’s location near the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania also unlocks new expansion opportunities for Oishii, according to the release. Situated within a day’s drive of a third of the U.S. population, the company says it will enter new markets along the East Coast and expand its relationship with retail partners like Whole Foods Market and FreshDirect.
While several farm units remain under construction, Amatelas Farm will now serve as the primary production facility for Oishii’s Koyo strawberries.
Mugen Farm — a 72,000-square-foot farm in Jersey City — will continue growing Omakase berries and add more space to grow the jewel-like Rubī Tomato, unveiled late last year. Oishii will also continue to operate a farm in Kearny, where most of its plants are propagated, the release said.
Oishii also says it will begin to trial new types of berries with retailers in the weeks to come, with plans to unveil a new strawberry varietal later this year.
Related video (below): A look inside Oishii’s Amatelas Farm
