Super greenhouses are a growth industry

A Hallam company is helping food growers to move indoors and keep growing.
Powerplants Australia director Carl van Loon said wild weather was putting more pressure on these producers than ever before.
“Lots more field growers are converting to semi-protected growers,” he said.
“That’s where we see quite a lot of growth in the industry.
“The weather’s not getting any easier to manage, it’s getting generally wilder.
“Farmers can handle a small change every year with temperature.
“What they can’t handle is the big storms that that brings.
“More and more we need to protect those growers from that.”
Powerplants creates automated greenhouse systems that include water and fertiliser delivery and recycling, climate control, harvesting aids and more.
Mr van Loon said farmers would usually have a couple of good years followed by two or three bad ones.
“Sometimes they’d go broke because they didn’t have enough good years in a row,” he said.
“We’re taking that risk out.”
Mr van Loon said vertical farming was becoming a more realistic option thanks to improvements in LED light technology.
“Every year they get a bit better and faster and cheaper,” he said.
“LEDs are one of the biggest parts of that whole vertical farming picture.
“In some places, it’s already a serious production system.”
Different coloured LED lights control how plants grow. Red promotes generative growing, encouraging the plant to flower and produce more fruit.
Blue encourages vegetative growth, producing more leaves.
“People are getting quite interested in controlling the plants,” Mr van Loon said.
It’s about fully-automated growing systems.
“You take all the guesswork out and turn it into a production process,” he said.
“With plants there are generally so many variables – weather, insects, disease …
“If you can make it into a totally predictable model, you can do it anywhere in the world.”
Powerplants was born in 1994.
“I was working for my dad and we had a plant nursery,” Mr van Loon said.
“I used to do all this technical work for him – climate control systems and all that sort of stuff. I was self-taught.
“Whenever I was buying things, we were buying greenhouse equipment from chicken shed manufacturers.
“There wasn’t a proper horticulture industry.
“You were buying stuff from people who didn’t know anything about plants.”
He saw a niche and started the business with his mum and brother. He’s since bought them out and expanded Powerplants.
“We used to just do equipment for nurseries, for greenhouses,” he said.
“Then the business grew and grew and the market changed.
“Now food production is the major part of the business.
“We design and install and service systems for growing food.”
He employs about 31 people, including engineers. The figure is down from a height of 44 over the past year due to “a bit of a recession”.
“There’s so much Dutch competition in Australia now,” he said.
“They’ve been having a terrible time over there so they’ve been coming over here more.
“It’s just starting to get busier in Europe again.”
So Mr van Loon is hopeful the tide will turn.
“We’ll always need to eat,” he said.
“People seem to be moving towards better and better quality and that’s what we’re all about – helping growers to produce really high quality crops without pesticides, without fungicides and sprays by giving the plants a really good climate.
“There really isn’t anyone else in Australia that can provide the servicing.
“We have some work overseas as well.
“We’re actively seeking more work overseas.”