Dutch vertical farming company Growy has acquired FoamPlant, the Groningen-based developer of GrowFoam, a biodegradable biopolymer substrate used in controlled environment agriculture. The deal, completed in October 2025, was held back from public announcement for six months while Growy integrated production into its Amsterdam facility.
"The past six months were about focus," says Laura van de Kreeke, co-founder of Growy. "We made difficult decisions about where not to spend our energy, and that allowed us to double down on the systems that are proving themselves." The acquisition covers all shares, hardware, and patents of FoamPlant and GrowFoam. Shareholders involved in the deal included the company's founders as well as investors Shift Invest, Future Food Fund, and NOM, the Noordelijke Ontwikkelings Maatschappij, a regional development fund that had backed the Groningen operation since at least 2019.
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From garage to acquisition
FoamPlant was founded in 2017 by Martin Tietema and Cor Kamminga. Tietema, who studied molecular biology in Groningen, developed the core biopolymer technology and served as CEO. The company began manufacturing GrowFoam in 2019 and grew to 38 employees at its peak, operating from a 5,000m2 facility in Groningen alongside a second product line, MooreFoam, a circular foam developed for furniture and bedding applications.
Pursuing two markets simultaneously proved difficult. In late 2024, FoamPlant reorganized, and Kamminga left, reducing its team to eight and concentrating entirely on GrowFoam. Tietema has joined the Growy team and is focused on developing GrowFoam's potential for the broader CEA industry.
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A 150m2 module replaces a 5,000m2 facility
Through joint engineering work between the Growy and FoamPlant teams during their partnership phase, the two companies developed a compact on-site production module of just 150m2, capable of delivering comparable GrowFoam output to the previous Groningen facility.
The module is now operational at Growy's Amsterdam farm, alongside its growing and R&D operations. The co-location was deliberate. "This was important to allow faster testing, iteration, and scaling within our own growing system," says van de Kreeke.
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What the substrate data shows
Growy evaluated a range of growing media before committing to GrowFoam, including rockwool and coco-based alternatives. Both performed adequately on plant metrics but fell short on other criteria at Growy's scale and level of automation. "We looked at consistency, handling in automated systems, water behavior, root aeration, waste streams, sustainability, and integration into our existing production process. GrowFoam gave us the combination we were looking for."
Growy's own trials recorded yield improvements of up to 40% compared to some fibre-based substrates, alongside growth cycle reductions of up to two days for certain crops. Consistency across batches also improved, driven by more predictable water retention and aeration behavior throughout the crop cycle. "Beyond yield, the biggest value is consistency. A substrate that behaves predictably makes it easier to standardize production and reduce variability."
GrowFoam's composition can be tuned to control water retention and aeration per crop type. Growy is developing specific configurations for its own system architecture, some of which will be made available externally. "If we want this industry to scale, we need better building blocks, and we need to make them accessible, not proprietary."
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Supplying competitors
FoamPlant had an existing commercial customer base in vertical farming and greenhouse production before the acquisition. Those growers are now buying their substrate from a company that directly competes with them. "We understand this concern very well," van de Kreeke says. "Our goal is not to limit access to GrowFoam, but to help make better substrates more widely available to the industry. We don't need to know a grower's confidential crop data or business strategy to supply them with a good substrate."
Existing customers are already being supplied from the Amsterdam facility. Growy says it is open to trials and sample requests from new customers now, with wider commercial availability to follow as production capacity scales. The first larger external customers are expected to be onboarded before the end of 2026.
On pricing, van de Kreeke is direct about where Growy's advantage actually sits. "Our advantage does not come from one input alone. It comes from the full system: our technology, automation, plant profiles, growing knowledge, software, and operational model. GrowFoam is an important part of that system, but we believe the industry benefits when better inputs become available."
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Six months, three decisions
The acquisition sits within a sequence of events that Growy has not previously connected explicitly. Growy Singapore entered provisional liquidation in late October 2025, the same month the FoamPlant deal closed. In April 2026, Growy went national with Jumbo, placing its lettuce in 500 stores across the Netherlands. A second Dutch farm is already in development.
"Closing Singapore was an incredibly difficult decision, but part of our focus. Acquiring FoamPlant was part of that. Preparing for national retail availability with Jumbo was part of that. All three are connected by the same strategy: focus on the Growy technology platform, strengthen our value chain, and prove that vertical farming can work commercially at scale."
For more information:
Growy
Ard and Laura van de Kreeke
[email protected]
www.growy.nl
