At present plant factories are no longer a unique concept. On the contrary, it is well developed in many countries such as Japan, UK, USA, China and many more.
With vertical farming, artificial light and a high level of automation, plant factories are considered as an effective solution for urban farming, they have many advantages over traditional ways of growing and are gaining interest from society. Over the last ten years the development of plant factories has risen, and the installations became more and more advanced. According to the team of Beijing Kingpeng Corporation, currently there are about 80 sets of artificially lighted plant factories in China.
The development and realization of plant factories have seen an increase in the last ten years, but for Beijing Plant Factory it has a longer history. The company has been active with study and research on plant factories since 2001 and after a decade of development, they built up their lab for plant factory research in Beijing in the year 2010. This was one of the earliest plant factories in China.
Restricted development
"Nowadays, after nearly 20 years of development, more advanced horticulture techniques have been brought in plant factories", they explain. "For example LED lights replaced fluorescent lights, and the light efficiency and energy efficiency have been significantly improved. The application scope has been continuously expanded."
On the other hand, the development of vertical farms are still restricted by its disadvantages like the construction costs, the energy consumption and the economic benefits. To solve these problems and make these facilities more suitable for use, Kingpeng continually targets on optimizing the system design. "For example, we're increasing the use of green energy resources as the power resource of plant factories, and focus on the use of more automatic logistic systems."
Recently also photovoltaic technologies have been brought into plant factory construction, and a new plant factory has been built in Guizhou, China. "We believe plant factories can become more and more practical and suitable for our daily life."
Guizhou plant factory
Beijing Kingpeng International Agriculture Corporation
7th floor, Advanced Material Building
Feng Hui Zhong Lu, Haidian District,
Beijing, China, 100094
Web: www.kingpengintl.com
Tel: +86 58711536
Fax: +86 587117560
Email: info@chinakingpeng.com