Hydroponic cultivation calls to mind galleries with thousands of plants growing on shelves under but Hong Kong start-up Farmacy HK is rolling out Farming as a Service (Faas), supplying vending-machine sized Smart Mobile Farms to bring herb and vegetable cultivation right to consumers.
The Hong Kong Trade Development Council's (HKTDC) Sydney office helped Farmacy reach a cooperation agreement with Australia's Lycasia Real Estate Group to provide the intelligent, mobile hydroponic planting machines for its residential building in the Melbourne suburb of Huntingdale, adding value to the project. The two parties plan to cooperate for a long time to apply this system in more local industrial and commercial projects.
Farmacy focuses on this pain point and develops a controlled-environment intelligent mobile hydroponic planting system. Through the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data, the firm provides the best growth environment for crops, which is “time-saving, labour-saving, water-saving and energy-saving compared with traditional farming” the firm said. The products bring consumers environmentally friendly, healthy, sweet, crisp and tender food. Raymond Mak, Co-Founder and CEO of Farmacy, said the system was developed to popularise the concept of green hydroponics, so city dwellers could be early adopters.
"When I worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers 10 years ago, I went to remote townships in Mainland China to do voluntary work. The villagers entertained us and cut and cooked all kinds of vegetables from their farmland. It was an unforgettable experience. I had never tasted this food before. Delicacies that can’t be bought. There used to be a classic advertising slogan saying ‘Cows Raised on the 15th Floor’. I wondered if there could also be ‘Vegetables Grown on the 15th Floor’, so every household can easily grow high-quality vegetables without being affected by the weather. Good, tasty crops.”
Read more at