A bit of a disclaimer may be in order: ever since I read about Robbes and Fujitsu’s project I’ve been a bit of a fan. Now, having met him along the team of Littlegarden, I’ve become a huge fan. Please let me know if gets too bad.

I had previously met with Kirmo and Jaakko from Little Garden Oy, first at circular economy event at Teurastamo and later at urban farming centre Kääntöpöytä where they have set up their office. I’m not sure why but I appear to have neglected to write about them before this post. Really, I haven’t? I should have, but I try to make amends today:

In the first place I heard about them through Helsieni and as both Helsieni and Littlegarden were at Teurastamo at the time I had a chance to chat with them. I was rather impressed with their project of building their own modular growth houses, very much like container-based plant factories but bigger. But when I heard that Robert Jordas was the third member of their founding team I knew I had to cover their case in my thesis. In case You’re not familiar with Robert’s work in greenhouse production business, well, you should. ´:D´ Go see his company’s website and this news article at hortidaily.com on their project with Fujitsu to build Finland’s first commercial plant factory. You can also google “robbes fujitsu” for good measure. The combination of Robbe’s long experience of greenhouse plant production –with continuous growth, investments and profits over many years– and technology from Fujitsu appears to me to be the most credible business case of plant factory production around.

Of course, please let me know if you know of other companies in the process of building plant factories. Preferably in southern Finland, but all info is much appreciated.

But back to Littlegarden: on it’s turn it presents an opportunity to prototype and build a growth space / plant factory system of it’s own without being vendor locked and aiming for modular, open sourced solution. I believe this kind of system would be very much sought after by pretty much anyone in greenhouse business that would like to keep up with the competition. I’ve tried to keep a lookout for a project like Luke’s Crop, Livestock and Forests Integrated System for Intelligent Automation, Processing and Control in Arable and Livestock Farms, and Forests but for horticultural production. But so far, no such luck. I’ve begun to toy with the idea to try and see if Luke would be interested in such a project since they already have the plant factory research project going on at Pyhäsalmi mine. Also, I would like to see if University of Helsinki would like to share the technology setup and experiences that they use in their growing rooms at Viikki campus.

Jaakko and Kirmo had set up a meeting with Robert to discuss the current situation of the project and to install new sensors on the pilot plant factory’s production line. They also invited me over to meet with Robert so we could see how could I help them with my research work. We set out from Kääntöpöytä in the morning with Kirmo’s biogas-powered Caravelle and headed to Lapinjärvi, stopping for a quick breakfast along the way.

At Lapinjärvi, we discussed a bit about my thesis, what I could do for them and then moved on to the project plans and blueprints on building the Pikkupuutarha’s pilot plant factory. Later we moved in to the current plant factory and I got to help Jaakko and Kirmo on installation of new sensors that will allow for more precise monitoring and recording of the production line’s conditions. I could also ask Robert more questions on the practicalities of the growing space and the limitations of their current setup. He also told me a few things on how he would like to build a new system, what would be the first improvements compared to the curent one and what it would ideally be capable of.

I also got to see the foundation and a bit of blueprints of the coming plant factory. Or “factories” as they are building one with cooperation with Fujitsu, Robbe’s Little Garden Ltd is building their own and the Littlegarden modular one is the third one under construction. Rather sizeable ones as well.

When we got everything sorted and verified the new sensors were working we had a quick wrap-up in the office and headed home. I have a lot more to look into and hopefully can help both Robbe’s and Pikkupuutarha’s project to succeed and share their learning experiences in my work.

Finally, a big THANK YOU to Robert, Jaakko and Kirmo for having me. I really hope I can interview you in my thesis and that I can find a way to pay you all back somehow.

T