ORLANDO: Colorado residents will soon be able to shop local for lettuce and microgreens from Kalera, one of the world’s leading hydroponic indoor vertical farming companies, as it announces today the opening of its Denver farm.
The nearly 90,000-square-foot facility, located at 18000 E 40th Avenue, in Aurora, Colorado is the company’s fifth domestic farm, joining a U.S. footprint that includes farms in Atlanta and Houston as well as two in Orlando. Globally, Kalera operates farms in Munich and Kuwait with a farm to open up in Singapore later this year. With today’s announcement, Kalera has officially started operations at the new Denver facility with the first harvest scheduled in May.
“Increasing our national and global footprint has been a priority for our team as we seek to serve our major retail and food service customers,” said Curtis McWilliams, Kalera’s interim chief executive officer. “Opening this facility is an exciting step towards this goal, and we’re proud to serve urban communities like Denver with clean, nutrition-dense leafy greens that are accessible in the local area.”
Kalera greens are pesticide-free and non-GMO, offering consumers fresh, clean, great-tasting lettuce. The climate-controlled environments at Kalera facilities allow innovation for sustainable farming methods, such as recycling water, and advanced technology that optimize plant nutrient formulas and increased production.
Currently, Orlando, Houston, and Atlanta, all Kalera’s large-scale farms in the US, are operating above the company’s 80% throughput yield target. Additionally, Atlanta and Houston (Kalera’s most recently-opened facilities prior to Denver) have achieved this performance significantly ahead of the commissioning targets.
Beyond achieving high yields, all Kalera farms are also making improvements in production capacity and corresponding revenues as demand for Kalera products continues to increase.
“Innovation is our focus, it’s what Kalera was founded on,” said McWilliams. “We’re thrilled with these results, but not surprised, and are eager to bring this level of operation to our Denver farm.”
The opening of the Denver farm follows the exciting news of Kalera’s recent merger with special purpose acquisition company, Agrico Acquisition Corp. The partnership will result in Kalera becoming the first vertical farming company to go public on the NASDAQ market, which the company will officially do later this year.
“Our partnership with Agrico will enable Kalera to fund the development of more farms worldwide in the near future to meet the growing demand for our products.” said McWilliams. “We anticipate immense growth in the next year and are looking forward to providing food security to more urban communities.”
Kalera is a vertical farming company headquartered in Orlando, Florida. Kalera uses technology to ensure that more people around the world have access to the freshest, most nutritious, and cleanest products available. It has spent several years optimizing plant nutrient formulas and developing an advanced automation and data acquisition system with Internet of Things, cloud, big data analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities. Kalera currently operates farms in the US (Orlando, Atlanta, Houston and Denver) as well as in Munich and Kuwait. Additional farms are in development. www.kalera.com