Refurbishing shipping containers into container farms is a great way to reuse materials. Upcycling was part of the original design for the Growcer farm, but the company quickly realized that there were environmental pitfalls that often outweighed the benefits. Shipping containers are reused for multiple other industries outside of vertical farming, but they discovered that their construction and especially insulation, wasn’t what was best for yield optimization, plant health, and energy usage.
In 2020, the company moved their manufacturing to Canada and also moved from licensing (buying from a third party) the farm technology to building their own in-house. "We learned a lot in the four years we had spent in vertical farming and wanted to put our insights and research into action and build a Growcer farm that would work sustainably, reliably, and for more people in more places," the team says.
They switched from shipping containers to custom-built modular structures as that allowed them to:
- Increase growing space
- Improve insulation (and therefore energy efficiency to keep operating costs reasonable)
- Improve temperature control (this is big for plant health and remote communities)
- Increase lifespan (up to 30 years instead of 25 years or less for shipping containers)
- Increase working aisle space to improve operator experience (more room to move around!)
- Design the farm with a slanted roof to reduce the collection of snow or rainwater and minimize risk for our customers
Read the entire article at The Growcer