Kazakh businesspeople establishing greenhouses in the country face competition from Uzbekistan producers and lack of retail availability. While healthy food is trending, the demand for fresh herbs and salad fixings is still low.
Despite the odds, the Almaty region’s GreenEco greenhouse in Panfilovo village of Talgar district is making a go of it. The facility is distinguished from other Kazakh greenhouses by cutting edge equipment and the highest level of computerisation and automation of all processes. Greens and herbs are grown year-round using the latest technologies from Denmark, Holland and Israel.
Despite the established procedures, the business can hardly be called profitable and requires significant investments, said company director Roman Shneiderman, according to kapital.kz.
“We started the construction of the greenhouse in 2016. In October 2017, we started production. Since this is a conveyor production, it took about five months to set up the technical parts of the operation. These include agricultural tests, material selection, line setting and correctly built light and temperature conditions. It takes 35 days from the moment of sowing to harvest,” he noted.