Freight Farms announces the launch of ICA Maxi Högskolan's own line of produce grown onsite for shoppers. Located in Halmstad Sweden, Freight Farms customer ICA Maxi Högskolan is one of ICA Gruppen's 1,300 grocery stores in the country. This month, the store began harvesting a range of hydroponically-grown greens for shoppers from Freight Farms' container farm, the Leafy Green Machine.
"We're excited to be the first ICA Maxi store to implement an onsite farm," said Rikard Hillarp, owner ICA Maxi Högskolan. "By growing crops just steps from our shelves, we're able to offer our customers what are truly the freshest greens possible."
ICA Maxi Högskolan employees, Max Rydberg and Douglas Klang, now grow produce onsite for customers in Freight Farms' Leafy Green Machine.
Freight Farms' containerized farming technology allows ICA Maxi Högskolan to create and maintain the optimal growing conditions to harvest produce year-round using less than 5 gallons of water per day. Beyond the store's initial offering of butterhead lettuce, spinach, and herbs, the farm's integrated IoT data platform, farmhand, will also allow the store to grow non-native crops otherwise unavailable in the region, regardless of seasonal limitations in Sweden's Nordic climate.
"Freight Farms' technology is especially helpful in Sweden, where our short growing seasons can limit crop availability throughout the year and increase our reliance on imported produce," added Hillarp. "We're now able to shorten the distance food travels to get to our customers from 2,000 kilometers to just 30 meters."
On March 29, ICA Maxi Högskolan kicked off its launch with a Harvest Festival for customers, selling produce and offering free samples of the newly-harvested greens and a Q&A with store employees Max Rydberg and Douglas Klang, now the newest onsite farmers.
"Our team innovated the technology to empower individuals and businesses all over the world to decentralize the food system in meaningful ways specific to their local community or environment," said Freight Farms CEO Brad McNamara. "We're thrilled to work with industry leaders like Rikard Hillarp and retailers like ICA Maxi, who together have the forward-thinking vision and reach to disrupt the grocery industry internationally."
Indoor Ag-Con Las Vegas
Brad McNamara will also kick off day two of Indoor Ag-Con with his keynote address on May 23, 2019. The company has a diverse range of global customers including Google, Ford, Kimbal Musk’s Square Roots, restaurants, schools, and independent farmers from Boston to Guam.
Brad joins a line-up of industry experts: Irving Fain, CEO of Bowery will kick off Indoor Ag-Con with the opening morning keynote on May 22, 2019. Check out the full roster of panels, sessions and other presentations from execs and leaders from Aerofarms, Vertical Harvest, Shenandoah Growers, Smallhold, Urban Crop Solutions, Bayer, Agribody Technologies, Sananbio, Fluence Bioengineering, TapRoot Holding and more.
For more information:
Freight Farms
www.freightfarms.com
Indoor Ag-Con
indoor.ag