Bringing energy savings to a robotics-assisted hydroponics farm

We’re co-innovating with our customers and leveraging digital technology to create the smart, safe, sustainable factories, production lines and warehouse operations of the future.

Singrow in Singapore grows fruit including strawberries vertically indoors. The founders approached us for help reducing their high energy and water consumption. We used our expertise with sensors, Norgren-cloud and edge computing to visualise data in a feedback loop so they can run the farm from their mobile phones. 

Key automation facts: 
» By cooling the growing racks rather than the whole warehouse and reflecting LED light to maximise efficiency we reduced energy consumption by 40% when compared to traditional vertical farming methods. 
» Better use of resources helped improve their yield-to-cost ratio (total yield over labour, electricity, land and water costs) so sales prices can be more competitive. 
» Our solution enables the ability to grow food productively in urban areas instead of the suburbs, which reduces the number of miles food travels and the carbon footprint.
 
“As an agri-tech startup with our core technology from plant science, we have to work with competent engineering partners, who can help us develop our precise agriculture design. Norgren has always acted swiftly and professionally. With their strong engineering team and global network, Norgren not only developed a prototype for us, but a solution with new possibilities.” 
Shengjie BAO
CEO and founder Singrow 

“Customers don’t buy technology, they buy solutions. The goal is to replace manual work with higher value work at the same time as reducing errors and wastage. The possibilities are endless.” 
Alex Tham
Regional Managing Director, Rest of Asia IMI Precision Engineering