Sundrop Farms managing director John Phinney has a simple way of explaining the fundamentals behind a 20 hectare greenhouse facility in arid lands in northern South Australia, which will produce 16,000 tonnes of tomatoes annually for supermarket giant Coles.
"We concentrate solar power. Anyone who's ever used a magnifying glass to set a leaf on fire has the fundamentals of what we're doing," he says.
Sundrop is part-way through the construction of a massive bank of greenhouses on arid lands just outside Port Augusta, about 300km north of Adelaide, which has been largely fuelled by a $100 million investment by private equity firm KKR signed off a year ago.
Mr Phinney says the project is on track to be completed by July or August, 2016, and involves a 100-fold expansion of an original pilot project started in 2009.