Dutch firm opens vertical farm with various 'climate zones'

It hopes to reach full production capacity in 2025 despite other local farms' setbacks

- Ariel Yu

A new farm has sprouted in Changi, producing greens such as basil, parsley, shiso and amaranth, along with baby leaf varieties such as kale.

While times have been rocky for farms in Singapore, Dutch agritech company Growy hopes to reach full production capacity of 500 tonnes of leafy greens per year by April or May 2025.

It bought over the partially completed indoor vertical farm in Changi Logistics Centre from another owner in 2023.

Operating under the Chef's Farm brand from Amsterdam, Growy currently supplies more than 30 different products, including herbs, microgreens, baby leaves and salad mixes to about 50 local hotels and restaurants.

The company plans to enter the retail market by December and sell its produce in supermarkets such as FairPrice, Cold Storage and Little Farms, said Mr Ard van de Kreeke, Growy's founder and chief executive.

Singapore has a "30 by 30" sustainable food security goal, aiming to have 30 per cent of the country's nutritional needs produced by the local agri-industry by 2030.

But though vertical farming is a promising concept in land-scarce Singapore, not all farms have found it smooth-going.

One of them, VertiVegies, abandoned its plans to build an indoor vertical farm in Lim Chu Kang and returned the land to the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) in April 2022.