Supercharged by the need to secure local supplies of fresh vegetables during the COVID-19 pandemic, some vertical farms are now branching out into other high-margin areas, such as medical cannabis, health supplements and cosmetics.
South Korean start-up Farm 8 Co is among a proliferation of indoor urban growers that saw sales jump during COVID-19. It is looking to increase sales by almost 50 percent to 90 billion won (US$79.2 million) this year, partly by boosting production of medical and cosmetic-based plants such as ginseng, Centella asiatica and Artemisia campestris, Farm 8 chief executive officer Kang Dae-hyun said.
In August last year, the company joined the country’s first regulation-free zone for medical cannabis, growing and processing hemp for cannabidiol. “There’s massive demand for medical cannabis and the market’s growing rapidly,” Kang said in an interview. “Most of our production is dedicated to salad greens at the moment, but ultimately we’ll be ramping up production of cosmetic and medical-based plants to maximize profit.”
Other vertical farms are also using the technology to meet rising demand for stringent quality control in medical and cosmetic applications, such as Denmark’s International Cosmetics Science Centre, Poland’s Vertigo Farms and California-based MedMen Enterprises.
Farm 8 grows about 1.1 tonnes of salad greens per day on less than 0.5 hectares of land, spread across locations in three cities in South Korea, including in a busy subway station in Seoul. It is one of the top local lettuce producers for fast-food chains including Subway Restaurants, Burger King Corp and KFC Corp. Sales rose 30 percent last year.
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