S11E153 Per Lysaa/Intravision Group AS - Gravity Flow: The Secret Behind Automated Indoor Agriculture

[00:00:00] Don't miss the premiere event of the year for everyone involved in greenhouse operations, controlled environment agriculture and vertical farming. Indoor AgCon, now in its 12th year, heads to its new location at the Westgate Las Vegas from March 11-12, 2025. Join grower operators, investors, startups, tech leaders, academics, government officials, food service retail suppliers and more from across the USA and over 30 other countries. Explore an expanded Expo floor filled with the latest product resources and business solutions.

[00:00:27] And gain insights from top industry experts, including CEOs, growers and investors at this full scale educational conference. Plus take advantage of invaluable networking opportunities. The team at Indoor AgCon has been generous enough to provide vertical farming podcast listeners with an additional 20% off of the full access conference passes. Just use promo code VFP at checkout. Visit indoor.ag and be part of the largest CEA industry gathering in Las Vegas in 2025.

[00:00:54] Indoor AgCon. So basically the primary processes are growing and biomass and stuff like that, while the secondary is more the protection towards stress or environment or lack of water. And some of these molecules the plant will then produce, we experience as tastes or medicine content, for example.

[00:01:17] So it's a very fascinating world for us when we started getting these tools.

[00:01:21] And then the story of course is then tech transfer that the chambers we made our own research chamber.

[00:01:26] Around 2015 we built a cannabis research facility or room at least at one of the licensed producers in Canada.

[00:01:39] Welcome to the vertical farming podcast, weekly conversations with fascinating CEOs, founders and ag tech visionaries.

[00:01:48] Join us every week as we dive deep into the world of vertical farming with your host, Harry Duran.

[00:01:56] I'm proud to be able to talk to you in the world of vertical farming podcast season 11.

[00:01:58] Regular listeners to the show.

[00:02:00] Welcome back.

[00:02:00] I always roll out the red carpet or the green carpet for you, depending on your preference.

[00:02:06] I'm appreciative of all the work you do to share the love to share the episodes to forward social posts, everything that you do to support the show.

[00:02:16] I greatly appreciate it.

[00:02:17] Keep on doing it.

[00:02:18] It's really how we spread the word.

[00:02:19] And if this is your first time listening, I'm positive you're in the right place.

[00:02:23] This is the show where we interview fascinating CEOs and founders of the leading vertical

[00:02:27] farming companies from around the world.

[00:02:28] I'm your host, Harry Duran, podcasting since 2014 with my first show, Podcast Junkies.

[00:02:34] I'm the founder of Fullcast, our full-service done-for-you podcast agency, and also newly

[00:02:40] appointed CEO of the AgTech Media Group.

[00:02:43] In case you missed it, we had an announcement on LinkedIn.

[00:02:45] Then my partnership with Seppur Ashard of iGrow News has now come to fruition.

[00:02:50] And thanks to the team at Harvest Returns, we've raised a small seed round to get some

[00:02:55] progress going on the site.

[00:02:57] So we've got a lot of great things in store for 2025.

[00:03:00] So please head on over to iGrow.News or iGrowNews.com for all your CEA news.

[00:03:09] In case you missed last episode, I spoke to Simon Wordle.

[00:03:12] He's the CEO of Good Drop.

[00:03:13] And in this fantastic episode, he brought a unique perspective to vertical farming.

[00:03:19] He talked about his background in design and a vision for sustainable cotton of all things.

[00:03:25] It's the first time we've mentioned that crop on this podcast.

[00:03:29] As the leader of Good Drop, he's spearheading an initiative to grow cotton in these controlled

[00:03:34] environments, and he's transforming the textile industry.

[00:03:37] I love this idea of a closed-loop system for cotton production.

[00:03:40] And it's something really thinking out of the box that I really love and appreciate.

[00:03:45] We talk about their ambitious plans for this closed-loop system, and he shares his insights

[00:03:49] on their progress from container-based experiments to plans for a pilot facility, all while tackling

[00:03:55] the challenges of reinventing the cotton supply chain.

[00:03:57] Make sure you listen to that inspiring episode if you haven't done so already.

[00:04:00] This week, I speak to Per Lisa.

[00:04:03] He's the CTO and co-founder of Elevate Farms and the CEO of IntraVision Group.

[00:04:06] His journey from architect to innovator and CEA is truly inspiring, and his work with LED

[00:04:12] systems and plant growth has led to groundbreaking developments in vertical farming and plant-based

[00:04:17] pharmaceuticals.

[00:04:18] I was fascinated to learn about Per's experiences working with space research institutes and his

[00:04:23] contributions to understanding plant growth in low atmospheric pressure environments.

[00:04:27] And we delve into the evolution of LED technology and its impact on plant cultivation, as well

[00:04:32] as the innovative gravity flow system used by Elevate Farms.

[00:04:35] Lots to cover in this episode, so make sure you've got a place to take your notes or just

[00:04:40] follow up with verticalfarmingpodcast.com to read everything we've listed, the show notes,

[00:04:46] the resources there as well.

[00:04:47] I want to ask for you, if you are enjoying this episode, past episodes, future episodes,

[00:04:52] please share this with a friend.

[00:04:54] I know I make this ask every single episode, but it's really important.

[00:04:57] It's really the best way to share the podcast and all the things that we're doing here in

[00:05:02] this space.

[00:05:03] So next time you're speaking to someone, one of your peers, one of your friends in this

[00:05:07] EA space, mention one of the episodes that caught your fancy, and I would truly, truly appreciate

[00:05:13] it.

[00:05:13] These episodes are chock full of great takeaways.

[00:05:16] You can always visit verticalfarmingpodcast.com to read the full show notes for each episode,

[00:05:19] which includes all guest links as well.

[00:05:21] Okay, enough about me, more about Pear, but before we do that, a few words from the amazing

[00:05:26] sponsors that support this show.

[00:05:28] So, Pear Alisa, CTO and co-founder of Elevate Farms and CEO of IntraVision Group, thank you

[00:05:33] so much for joining me on the Vertical Farming Podcast.

[00:05:36] Thank you.

[00:05:37] This is such a global show because of the nature of CEA, so I always like to start these conversations

[00:05:41] with letting the listener and the viewer know where in the world you're calling from and probably

[00:05:46] evening for you now.

[00:05:48] Sure, it is actually, yes.

[00:05:49] I'm in Oslo, Norway right now.

[00:05:53] Were you born and raised there?

[00:05:55] I was not born in Oslo, but I grew up on the west coast of Norway, which is the fjord country,

[00:06:01] which is kind of famous as a tourist destination.

[00:06:04] Do you get a lot of people visiting or having to take people to all the famous places that tourists

[00:06:10] like to see?

[00:06:11] Yeah, I mean, especially the west coast and also the northern part is kind of very touristy,

[00:06:16] I would say.

[00:06:17] And we have a lot of cruise ships coming in the summer.

[00:06:20] Winter tourism has really grown the last decade, I would say.

[00:06:24] Northern lights and all that stuff, obviously.

[00:06:26] And also, I mean, Oslo has really become quite a nice city the last two decades, I would say.

[00:06:32] We spent the oil money on something.

[00:06:34] So it's quite a nice spot now.

[00:06:38] So we'll get into the work you're doing with Elevate Farms, which is relevant to this show.

[00:06:42] But prior to that, you've been working at IntraVision.

[00:06:45] So for people to give a little bit of background as to what IntraVision is and how it ties into

[00:06:50] the work you're doing at Elevate, can you talk a little bit about your background and

[00:06:53] how that got started?

[00:06:55] I can do that.

[00:06:56] And basically, I'm running IntraVision and Elevate are being run in parallel.

[00:07:00] So IntraVision being Elevate's tech supplier and science partner, basically.

[00:07:06] So Elevate is more a large-scale farm operation.

[00:07:11] So more similar to what you would expect plenty of more aero farms to do in that space.

[00:07:16] I can start, yeah.

[00:07:17] So I'm actually, by education, I'm an architect.

[00:07:22] And back when I graduated in 91, there was a finance crisis.

[00:07:26] And I started, actually, a few years prior to work on my marine research institute.

[00:07:33] Anything from shipbuilding, fast ferries, and fish in aquaculture.

[00:07:37] So when I graduated, I got my first job in this research institute.

[00:07:42] And I ended up being there for seven years.

[00:07:45] And afterwards, I was basically hired to innovate, to make new stuff.

[00:07:50] That turns out I had a kind of talent for applied physics and innovation and making things.

[00:07:57] So I guess that's my course.

[00:08:00] And so I never, normally say I never had a real job.

[00:08:04] Because after seven years in that research institute, I was not an engineer and I was not an architect.

[00:08:09] So basically started the intervention back in 98 as a consequence of all these things.

[00:08:17] And quite early on, around 99, we secured an exclusive on what was back then a Norwegian tech company making colored light tubes.

[00:08:27] So red, blue, green, colored light tubes, which had long liberty.

[00:08:33] So 50,000 orders or use hours.

[00:08:37] And we could compute control them.

[00:08:39] So we could dim the light and mix and make spectrum combinations.

[00:08:42] And I took this into two directions.

[00:08:45] One was photobiology.

[00:08:48] So we started research projects both on fish in aquaculture, how to control the light-induced hormones of melatonin, which again controls the rhythm.

[00:09:00] So when typically in aquaculture, you want to have fish juveniles maybe four times a year.

[00:09:06] So we kept the fish in dark rooms and simulated the seasons.

[00:09:11] So that would spawn at different points.

[00:09:12] And then more importantly, on the on-growing phase, we wanted to keep them in an eternal spring.

[00:09:20] So to avoid sexual maturation at all using light.

[00:09:24] And these things actually work.

[00:09:25] And then in parallel, we started with plants with the microalgae.

[00:09:29] So we built the photobioreactors to grow algae.

[00:09:33] And there were a few commercial endpoints we chased.

[00:09:37] But it was anything from astaxanthin, the red color in the salmon, which is a feed component.

[00:09:42] We did the green algae for life feed processes for fish.

[00:09:46] And then also we chased a sun protection agent, which were active in the UVA and blue light range where people get the skin cancer.

[00:09:55] So I spent a decade on that.

[00:09:57] And then gradually from 2003 and onwards, we teamed up with a Dutch or a Philips-owned company in Holland.

[00:10:05] And we switched from light tubes to this.

[00:10:09] So I would say we were one of the early pioneers when it comes to kind of photobiology and LED light.

[00:10:17] And then gradually, since 2003, so more than 21 years, we worked with LEDs in various kind of plant relations.

[00:10:26] So that was...

[00:10:27] Just there for a second.

[00:10:28] What were you seeing at the time?

[00:10:30] You know, because you're working in a lot of like the marine space in terms of like all the things that you were mentioning previously.

[00:10:35] When did you start to see or were you always aware of what was happening in the controlled environment space as it relates to growing produce indoors?

[00:10:44] Is that something you were aware of at the time?

[00:10:46] Or did you start to become more aware of it as you started to enter that space?

[00:10:50] That happened later.

[00:10:52] When we started...

[00:10:53] So I should mention, the second avenue I followed with lights where we basically made large art installations.

[00:11:00] Okay.

[00:11:02] Okay.

[00:11:03] So we had a completely different use where we made computer controlled art installations and actually made money on that back in the day.

[00:11:11] Anything from subway stations to bank headquarters and also public projects, especially in Norway.

[00:11:17] We exhibited at the Shanghai Biennale in 2006.

[00:11:22] So we had these kind of two very different things from a perception point of view, but technologically they were almost the same.

[00:11:31] So we basically used the same tech and computer controlled systems in two very different ways.

[00:11:36] In 2003, when we started with LEDs, we started working with turf grass.

[00:11:42] And that was the first kind of land-based planting I touched.

[00:11:46] We basically did the research in the UK and in Penn State University.

[00:11:51] So we had two different research avenues.

[00:11:54] The idea was to grow natural turf on football fields and on golf greens.

[00:12:01] So I did test and pilot a bit with some of the U.S. Open clubs in Augusta.

[00:12:08] And we also had a system at Green Bay Package in Wisconsin.

[00:12:12] That was a fun one because this was not done just light.

[00:12:16] It was an environment, a control environment.

[00:12:18] So we used the heat from the LEDs to control the climate just in the microclimate, four inches above the turf.

[00:12:27] And the guys from Green Bay Package said that they put the system out before Christmas and it started snowing.

[00:12:33] And when it came back after New Year, there was a rabbit family living under this really nice 20 Celsius.

[00:12:41] That's funny.

[00:12:43] With food growing there.

[00:12:45] So that was kind of a fun little story.

[00:12:48] What was your experience of visiting the States and especially the Midwest?

[00:12:52] Weather-wise, it's probably similar because I live in Minnesota, which is right next door to Wisconsin.

[00:12:57] And there's a lot of Scandinavians that live here, that have migrated here many, probably decades ago.

[00:13:03] Yeah, I've been to 40-some states and probably spent two years in America.

[00:13:09] I also lived a year in Chicago as an exchange student back in the day, in the early 80s.

[00:13:15] So now I have a very kind of nice relationship to America and also Canada, obviously.

[00:13:21] Basically, that was the starting point.

[00:13:22] And then around 2008-9, we got funding for something called a Eurostar project, which is a European research program.

[00:13:32] And that was together with a company in Iceland called Orph Genetics.

[00:13:36] They used the GMO barley to produce human proteins, cytokines, in the seeds of the barley.

[00:13:46] So, and typically their customers would be a medicinal research project, a stem cell, where you needed one isolated human protein to do some kind of research.

[00:13:55] And so we started on kind of venturing into this area of plant-made pharmaceuticals.

[00:14:02] That's kind of the label on this thing.

[00:14:05] And to make it very short, you can use a lot of different plants as long as they have the same kind of DNA structure as a human diploid.

[00:14:13] And then you can make big protein molecules.

[00:14:16] So there was a lot of research being done on cancer drugs.

[00:14:20] There's a lot on vaccines.

[00:14:22] So the first time, I guess, this was successfully demonstrated that scale was after the, oh, sorry, I forgot the name.

[00:14:30] Was it the Ebola outbreak in Africa?

[00:14:32] Eight, nine years back?

[00:14:34] The Western aid workers that came back to Europe and America were saved using a tobacco infiltration system where you use transgenic tobacco plants and use them as a factory to grow the drug, basically.

[00:14:48] So the reason why we ventured into this space was that LEDs were still very expensive back then.

[00:14:54] When I started with LEDs in 2003-04, I would only get like four lumen per watt of light output on a blue LED.

[00:15:02] So that was 2003-04.

[00:15:05] In 2014, I got 40 lumen on the same energy.

[00:15:09] And the 2003 LED cost me eight US dollars, while by 14, it was one dollar.

[00:15:16] And then by 19, 20, it was 40 cents.

[00:15:20] Wow.

[00:15:21] And light input have increased again.

[00:15:23] So over the intervention kind of journey here has been very much about tech maturity.

[00:15:29] And we were early, but we were also lucky in the sense that we managed to be part of or initiate a relatively large string of research projects.

[00:15:40] So we started making research equipment and sold that to different kind of institutions, mainly towards universities.

[00:15:47] But we also started supplying space research institutes in North America and also the European Space Agency.

[00:15:54] So we found a very small niche where we could learn and develop, basically.

[00:16:02] So through that project in Iceland, I used a Norwegian space research group to develop a remote control system.

[00:16:09] The workers in Iceland only were kind of greenhouse workers.

[00:16:12] There were no scientists.

[00:16:14] So I used a Norwegian group.

[00:16:16] They remotely controlled from their office a unit at the International Space Station.

[00:16:20] That was kind of what triggered me.

[00:16:22] It was this very cool remote control thing they had.

[00:16:26] So they joined in and we developed this remote control for the system in Iceland.

[00:16:30] And then I asked them, so who is the leading environment or group in the world when it comes to making plans for human space travel?

[00:16:40] So are based on the moon or Mars.

[00:16:43] And that pointed me to the University of Guelph and Professor Mike Dixon there.

[00:16:48] So the short story is that Dixon was a postdoc at NASA in Kennedy, where they used to do all these things.

[00:16:56] He managed to get funding from the Canadian Space Agency to build his institute at the University of Guelph.

[00:17:04] That must have been around 2005, 2006-ish, around there.

[00:17:10] So when the whole institute was built to answer one big question,

[00:17:14] is it possible to grow earth plants in a low atmospheric pressure?

[00:17:19] So imagine you are on Mars.

[00:17:21] It's a small planet, one third of the gravitation field versus the earth.

[00:17:27] And the question was, are the plants able to do the gas balance?

[00:17:30] Can they still catch the CO2 and do this whole photosynthesis process?

[00:17:37] So the Guelph facility has a unique chamber set up with, they call it, hyperbaric research chambers.

[00:17:43] So they are vacuum chambers.

[00:17:45] And you can then take it down and mimic the gravitation field on the moon or on Mars, for example,

[00:17:51] and then test how this works.

[00:17:53] And the really nice thing for me was that when I started putting LEDs into these chambers

[00:17:58] and you close the door on a vacuum chamber,

[00:18:01] you need a really high fidelity instrumentation to understand what happens inside

[00:18:05] and camera setups and all that stuff, obviously.

[00:18:07] You cannot open the door.

[00:18:09] So you need the sensor systems to work.

[00:18:12] And everything is like an isolated universe.

[00:18:15] No outside things affecting what's happening inside the box.

[00:18:20] So when we dial up more blue light within two minutes,

[00:18:23] we could actually see how that affected the gas balance.

[00:18:27] If the plants would consume more CO2, release moisture or oxygen, for example.

[00:18:33] So it gave us a very precise understanding on how plants interact with their environment.

[00:18:40] And that's kind of been key for what the intervention and elevate them on how we afterwards then design the commercial systems.

[00:18:48] Was there anything as you were going through those and doing those experiments,

[00:18:51] was there anything about that process that was like surprising to you at the time?

[00:18:55] Or, you know, you obviously need a high degree of instrumentation and calibration to measure things at that level.

[00:19:01] So, you know, maybe looking back, it makes sense.

[00:19:04] But I'm wondering, as you were going through that experience at the time,

[00:19:07] if there was anything that was really surprising for you?

[00:19:09] I wouldn't say it was really surprising,

[00:19:12] but it was a very kind of happy moment when I understood what we could do with these things

[00:19:16] and how we could evolve by putting in more advanced LED systems.

[00:19:23] So we then started making very efficient, high-intensity and multispectrum LED systems

[00:19:29] for the different chambers that have.

[00:19:31] So back around 2012-13, we had a lamp with five times the intensity of the sun,

[00:19:38] half a meter inside a chamber on seven different colors,

[00:19:42] so orange, purple, red, blue, green.

[00:19:45] We could use not to kind of grow plants at 10,000 micromoles,

[00:19:50] which of course doesn't make any sense.

[00:19:51] The sunlight is 2,000 micromoles for reference.

[00:19:54] But we could use it to mix different spectrums and start to learn more about

[00:19:59] how does the plant respond to this.

[00:20:01] And basically, I guess the key element here is that plants have light receptors.

[00:20:06] So they are able to detect from far red through red, green, blue up to the UV.

[00:20:13] And whenever they detect, the combination of spectrum and intensity

[00:20:18] sets off a chemical process in the plant that directly controls morphology.

[00:20:23] And what we call primary secondary metabolite processes.

[00:20:27] To give you the short story, so in nature, there is this tobacco plant called the nicotina betamiana,

[00:20:34] who lives in a symbiosis with an agrobacteria.

[00:20:38] And in nature, that agrobacteria will insert itself into the roots of this tobacco plant

[00:20:43] and force the plant to produce a certain protein DNA.

[00:20:49] The GMO part is that the GMO is a symbiosis to happen in the leaf structure.

[00:20:54] As opposed to the root structure?

[00:20:56] Yes.

[00:20:57] Because then it's in the leaf biomass.

[00:20:59] So the way you do it is you grow this plant for roughly four weeks.

[00:21:02] You have a, I don't know, 18-inch tall tobacco plant, something like that.

[00:21:06] You then invert that plant upside down inside a vacuum chamber, suck out the air, dip the whole

[00:21:13] thing into a water solution where you have the agrobacterium with the DNA for the protein

[00:21:20] you want to make.

[00:21:21] And then you release vacuum and everything is sucked into the leaf.

[00:21:26] And while you grow the tobacco plant afterwards for roughly a week, the bacteria forces the

[00:21:33] plant to produce the drug or vaccine.

[00:21:36] So basically a big protein molecule.

[00:21:38] And there is a few companies in North America and Canada doing this.

[00:21:43] So it's a low cost to make drugs versus doing the big bio-reptor systems, for example.

[00:21:50] So the idea that I've been working on is to, so back in the day, PlantForm, we're working

[00:21:55] with bio-signal Herceptin, which is a breast cancer drug.

[00:21:59] Women have to take after operation.

[00:22:01] But the cost point of that for one patient is roughly $35,000 a year.

[00:22:07] So that excludes the big portions of the world, right?

[00:22:11] And this approach was roughly 10% of the costs on the production part.

[00:22:18] So the idea was to do this in more less developed countries or less wealthy countries, basically.

[00:22:25] So that was kind of...

[00:22:27] So in order to do that, I needed to vacuum infiltrate tons of biomass every day.

[00:22:34] And I needed to make a grow box, we call it, the one we grow the plants in.

[00:22:38] And I needed one we check in and invert.

[00:22:40] So then we realized we had to actually grow the whole plant from seed in that box.

[00:22:45] And that was the starting point.

[00:22:47] The next thing we had to do was to come up with a grow system.

[00:22:51] And that became the system we patented, which Elevate is using, and we named it the gravity flow.

[00:22:58] So basically, the gravity flow, imagine it's a very long rack, almost like a tunnel.

[00:23:03] And it has a lift on one side feeding in the grow boxes.

[00:23:08] And then they just roll down through the system on gravity.

[00:23:12] And we extract them on the other side when the plants are ready for harvest.

[00:23:17] So it's a relatively highly automated system.

[00:23:21] And then we have very advanced light and air control inside that tunnel.

[00:23:25] So we always control the temperature and humidity and the light spectrum and everything.

[00:23:32] And we also track everything with RFID.

[00:23:34] So we always know where each box is in the system.

[00:23:38] So right now, we don't actually have anybody working inside the grow rooms.

[00:23:42] It's all automated.

[00:23:44] Yeah, it's all automated inside the grow room.

[00:23:46] Only maintenance and sanitation and stuff like that, obviously.

[00:23:50] So all the workers are working on the start.

[00:23:53] So there's the seeding and getting that stuff, monitoring the transplantation and stuff.

[00:23:57] And then on the harvesting packaging side.

[00:24:01] What were your thoughts as you were starting Elevate?

[00:24:03] Did you want to sort of prove this use case out?

[00:24:06] Or did you feel that you then had the opportunity to begin,

[00:24:09] because of this patented system and the innovative way in which you were growing,

[00:24:12] there was a new opportunity to grow additional types of crops using this method?

[00:24:17] Yeah, I would say it's a combo.

[00:24:19] So we started around 2014 to supply LED lights to vertical farming.

[00:24:24] And we teamed up with a few kind of companies.

[00:24:27] So we worked a lot with Zipgrove, which used to be, I guess, bright agriculture,

[00:24:31] which then became plenty.

[00:24:33] So we're an early, I would say, supplier into this industry.

[00:24:37] And we worked with a lot of what became brand names.

[00:24:40] But the challenge was that all the clients, none of them actually had any IP.

[00:24:46] So they couldn't really scale.

[00:24:49] So, and then since I'm an architect, I read a lot of stuff,

[00:24:53] because obviously I don't know anything about almost most things.

[00:24:56] I read Peter Drucker, the guy who invented the management theory on quality management.

[00:25:02] And he said that the purpose of a business is the creation of customers.

[00:25:08] It's not about shareholder value or maximizing return investment.

[00:25:12] It's about creation of customers.

[00:25:14] So I decided, well, if I can't find a big customer, I have to create one.

[00:25:20] And obviously, working with all these vertical farms, I met a lot of people.

[00:25:24] And then when I met my co-founder in Elevate, Amin Jadavji, I thought, let's give this one a chance and see.

[00:25:31] So we put the IP into what became Elevate for Leafy Greens.

[00:25:36] Amin used to run a paper tissue business.

[00:25:40] So when he was still in his 20s, he and a cousin, I think, took over the family business and ran that for 15 years and sold it.

[00:25:47] And their clients was the U.S. food service industry, companies like U.S. Food, Cisco, the big ones.

[00:25:56] Big distributors here, yeah.

[00:25:57] Yeah, I looked into the numbers and each of them make something like nine times the food we consume in Norway.

[00:26:03] So it's hard to really imagine the scale, right?

[00:26:06] We're only 5 million people here.

[00:26:08] So anyway, so the idea we went for was then to do large quantities, high quality at commodity scale.

[00:26:15] Or commodity pricing.

[00:26:18] So not super expensive micro or baby greens for a niche market, right?

[00:26:23] You cannot get the big volume.

[00:26:25] And we are able to do that.

[00:26:28] But of course, as anything else, there's a lot of challenges on actually getting that to roll.

[00:26:34] And one of the things we discovered, we built this Elevate facility in Orange, New Jersey.

[00:26:39] And we are able to do almost 200 kilo a square meter a year, which is two, three times what the competition can do.

[00:26:47] We really have high yield, but still, it's a small facility.

[00:26:53] So in order to serve these big industry players, you need to have some impact.

[00:26:59] You need to replace trucks going from Salinas or from Arizona.

[00:27:04] You can't give them five pallets.

[00:27:06] It has to be five trucks or something.

[00:27:08] And that's still in the works.

[00:27:10] We are looking at sites in Pennsylvania for something big.

[00:27:15] And hopefully, we'll get there soon.

[00:27:18] What's been the biggest shift for you?

[00:27:20] Because like you said, you come from an architecture background.

[00:27:23] Obviously, you have a mind for tackling engineering tasks.

[00:27:27] When you had to make the shift into business mindset, marketing mindset, all the things that Peter Drucker talks about, right?

[00:27:35] And just figuring out what's the market for this.

[00:27:38] Obviously, partnering with someone who had experience in manufacturing was helpful.

[00:27:42] How much of a challenge was that for you to kind of make that shift in your mindset into realizing that you needed it?

[00:27:48] What got you here won't get you there is the saying, right?

[00:27:51] So you have to change your way of thinking.

[00:27:53] Yeah, I don't know.

[00:27:54] I mean, I do consider myself being very privileged or lucky in a way.

[00:27:59] I mean, I've spent probably two years in Asia making stuff.

[00:28:03] I've spent two years in North America, Canada, selling and installing stuff.

[00:28:07] And of course, a lot in Europe and the Middle East.

[00:28:10] So basically, all the tasks I have to do is a necessity to move things forward.

[00:28:17] I get my kind of happiness or kick out of making stuff.

[00:28:20] So normally, when I did big art installations, I would say that there was three moments of profound happiness.

[00:28:27] It was when I got the idea, when I managed to sell it.

[00:28:31] And then two and a half years later, when I could see it actually in action.

[00:28:37] And it's a little bit the same with these systems we grow for plants because there is a lot of hard work and stuff you have to go through.

[00:28:46] And there's a lot of small and big crisis you need to manage to get there.

[00:28:50] You need to deal with people, obviously.

[00:28:52] And I enjoy people.

[00:28:54] I mean, this would not have worked if I didn't do that.

[00:28:56] And I would say most of my best friends are kind of the researchers and the people I have in companies we work with.

[00:29:04] I'm a workaholic.

[00:29:05] There's no way of denying that.

[00:29:10] Speaking of being a workaholic, you have your hands in two different businesses.

[00:29:13] Having a hand in one is a challenge for most CEOs.

[00:29:16] So how do you manage or how do you figure out the time you need to spend on IntraVision versus the time you spend on Elevate?

[00:29:24] I'm curious about that because there's probably CEOs that are trying to wear multiple hats also that are listening.

[00:29:30] And I'm curious what your approach is.

[00:29:32] Yeah, I'm only the CEO of IntraVision.

[00:29:34] I'm not that on Elevate.

[00:29:34] I'm functioning, I would say, more like a CTO there.

[00:29:38] Which is still a big task.

[00:29:39] Yeah, it's a big task.

[00:29:41] But I make the tech in one company and we use it in the other one.

[00:29:44] So in my experience, most of the good ideas or good innovation we come up with are direct responses to some kind of need or challenge in either production or a customer need.

[00:29:57] We spend a lot of time and energy trying to optimize the finished product for a specific task, optimize the process of how to make it.

[00:30:08] And we have the luxury that we basically go all the way.

[00:30:12] We try to control everything from the grow plug or the media or what it is basically to the way it's kind of harvested and packaged in the other end.

[00:30:21] So that's where we do a lot.

[00:30:23] We have a very good 15-year almost relation with the University of Guelph.

[00:30:27] And right now we have nine students from PhD, master to undergrads working on different types of plants for us.

[00:30:36] And we cover anything from food to animal fodder to medicinal plants.

[00:30:39] So it's quite a range.

[00:30:41] And most of the biological research we do support will probably never end up in a product.

[00:30:49] But they are all kind of very important on the learning.

[00:30:51] And then we have quite a few future candidates which we do believe will end up with as kind of products in some sense.

[00:30:59] And that's what I do for Elevate as well.

[00:31:00] I try to optimize the products and understand exactly how we can do the tech towards a certain scale of a market or whatever it is basically.

[00:31:10] What's a tough question you've had to ask yourself recently?

[00:31:15] Tough question I have to ask myself.

[00:31:18] I'm not sure.

[00:31:19] I should probably spend more time on that, I guess.

[00:31:21] Is that correct?

[00:31:23] No, but I'm getting older.

[00:31:25] And yeah, it's building something when you start with one person and you do this organic.

[00:31:30] And also because I control too many parts of the process.

[00:31:36] It's always challenging because in a starting point, of course, you are the driving force behind everything.

[00:31:42] But if you continue being that, you cannot grow.

[00:31:45] You need to let go.

[00:31:47] You need to trust people.

[00:31:48] You need to.

[00:31:49] Yeah.

[00:31:49] So that's probably where I'm failing the most, I would say.

[00:31:53] I just spend too much time on it or I don't understand how to get more people quickly up to kind of a high level.

[00:32:00] And then, of course, you burn your finger sometimes because you give people responsibility and they don't deliver.

[00:32:06] But I'm sure I could improve a lot on that.

[00:32:09] But we have a really good workflow.

[00:32:12] And so I'm really proud of the team we have now.

[00:32:14] And it's very multinational.

[00:32:16] It's quite young and it's very diversified.

[00:32:20] Where are you seeing the most innovation happening in the controlled environment space?

[00:32:26] That's a good question.

[00:32:28] I mean, if you look at the LEDs, the light sources, all the stuff we use there, it's kind of, it's started to become very mature.

[00:32:35] Yeah.

[00:32:36] I would say that I expect the mature innovation to happen on the control sides, especially on the machine learning using cameras and then towards more advanced AIs.

[00:32:48] I'm certain that's going to be a rapid development in the next five to 10 years.

[00:32:53] If I had the money, I could probably come up with 10 areas where we could really use a camera-based machine learning today and then a more advanced AI in three years' time or something.

[00:33:06] But of course, again, I mean, everybody, every industry wants the same things, right?

[00:33:11] So there is a limited resources on good software people as well.

[00:33:16] So that's competition there.

[00:33:17] But we are working over our own processes to get there.

[00:33:21] And it's about having a core team in-house and partnering with the right groups, I think.

[00:33:26] We have very much a partnering structure.

[00:33:28] We partner with anything from universities to tech supplies.

[00:33:32] Yeah.

[00:33:33] We don't try to do everything.

[00:33:35] That's important.

[00:33:37] On the Elevate Farm side, who is an ideal partner or a client for you?

[00:33:43] Where are you looking to develop relationships there?

[00:33:46] So we focus on Central Europe and Switzerland, basically, and on East Coast USA.

[00:33:53] That's kind of the two focus areas we have right now.

[00:33:55] And in both regions, we are aiming to build something big.

[00:34:00] Four or five million kilos a year type operations.

[00:34:04] And we need to get there to have some impact.

[00:34:07] But again, we are also resource-limited, both on people and friends.

[00:34:12] So, I mean, we've been invited to a lot of projects in the Middle East.

[00:34:16] And none of them have kind of matured to anything or substance yet.

[00:34:22] But obviously, that's a big area to expand.

[00:34:25] If you look a little bit more into, like, the 10-year perspective,

[00:34:29] we studied a lot on kind of available water resources for food production.

[00:34:34] And the projection is that around 2030,

[00:34:38] we have this from a publication in Nature, for example,

[00:34:41] we are facing a global water crisis,

[00:34:44] which greatly will impact and disrupt how we make food on these planets.

[00:34:50] And 2030 onwards, it's going to look bad.

[00:34:53] And countries like Asia, Africa, parts of Europe, parts of North America,

[00:34:59] are really badly positioned.

[00:35:02] And of course, as it always is, sadly,

[00:35:05] the rich countries will always manage to buy feed, right?

[00:35:09] So it's the poor people who we don't get.

[00:35:12] So I do see that, I mean, we have in the research pipeline for the next 10 years,

[00:35:17] we have a 10-year pipeline.

[00:35:19] We do stuff like mint oil, for example.

[00:35:23] And the reason is that mint oil is used as a food taste additive,

[00:35:27] but it's used in collagate toothpaste,

[00:35:29] it's used in chewing gum, everything, basically.

[00:35:32] But the mint plant, which used to be grown a lot in America,

[00:35:35] has a fungus or virus in its roots,

[00:35:38] which contaminates the soil you grow it in.

[00:35:41] And then you cannot continue growing it.

[00:35:43] So I think between the collagate and a few other big ones,

[00:35:47] they consumed all the ground in North America now,

[00:35:50] they don't really lost 220 farms or something.

[00:35:53] Wow.

[00:35:54] So they moved, I saw it to Southeast Asia,

[00:35:57] so Vietnam, China, Sri Lanka.

[00:36:00] But that's not going to be sustainable.

[00:36:03] And of course, it's a very easy crop to move to an indoor system at scale.

[00:36:09] It's a relatively low height crop,

[00:36:11] so you can stack it in multilayers, for example.

[00:36:15] So we're doing the research now,

[00:36:17] so at some point I believe we will build really large systems to do that at scale.

[00:36:23] Because they will have to make more rice,

[00:36:26] more staple foods in Asia to support the growing population.

[00:36:31] It sounds like there's definitely a lot of opportunities there.

[00:36:33] What are you seeing?

[00:36:34] What's your perspective on your colleagues that are in the indoor farming space?

[00:36:39] What I like to do towards the end of these conversations

[00:36:42] is almost like create an open forum.

[00:36:45] I know there's always people that are worried about

[00:36:48] protecting all their IP and keeping everything in house,

[00:36:51] but there has been some conversations about

[00:36:53] trying to find a way to collaborate,

[00:36:56] and that could look differently for different companies

[00:36:58] working on different projects.

[00:37:00] But I'm curious if you have any thoughts

[00:37:02] for the CEA space,

[00:37:04] for your colleagues in this space,

[00:37:06] to foster that collaboration.

[00:37:08] That's a good question.

[00:37:09] We have, yeah, it is as you said,

[00:37:11] there is a kind of certain element of competition,

[00:37:14] which of course will make that a bit tricky maybe to arrange.

[00:37:19] But in honesty though, I mean, food is so enormous.

[00:37:24] And I don't know what vertical farming has managed to get

[00:37:27] to consume food in America,

[00:37:29] but if it's a tenth of a percent, I would be surprised.

[00:37:33] So reality, I guess,

[00:37:35] is that the disruption is happening regardless.

[00:37:39] When I started working with Algea back in 98.9,

[00:37:43] we had 385 ppm of CO2 in the air.

[00:37:47] And this year, I'm guessing it's around 416, 17.

[00:37:52] Pre-industrial revolution in the UK, it was 180.

[00:37:57] So global warming is happening,

[00:37:59] and there's no political ability or will to stop that.

[00:38:05] It's just going to continue.

[00:38:06] And you can just see the new shift now in America,

[00:38:09] where oil and coal will kind of really come back.

[00:38:13] And of course, China, Russia,

[00:38:16] I mean, name a big country,

[00:38:18] and they're not able to do that.

[00:38:20] And I mean,

[00:38:22] you cannot expect the poor people not to eat.

[00:38:25] I mean, that's just reality.

[00:38:27] So in order to kind of better the planet,

[00:38:30] by 2050, I believe,

[00:38:31] we need three times more energy on the planet.

[00:38:35] Because you cannot lift people out of poverty

[00:38:37] without giving them access to the modern media.

[00:38:41] They need internet,

[00:38:42] they need the platform to communicate,

[00:38:44] and they need to learn, right?

[00:38:45] So if you consider that only something like 15%

[00:38:49] of the energy we have today is sustainable,

[00:38:52] just imagine the shift you have to go

[00:38:54] if you have to make three times that energy

[00:38:56] in 30 years,

[00:38:57] and it all has to be sustainable.

[00:39:00] It's an immense task.

[00:39:01] And then we have the water thing.

[00:39:03] So ideally,

[00:39:05] we should all try to cooperate and share learnings.

[00:39:08] I think it's probably the proper thing to do.

[00:39:10] But yeah,

[00:39:11] I think that's the common thread

[00:39:14] that we hear in these conversations.

[00:39:16] There's enough work for everyone.

[00:39:18] And that's what they call it here,

[00:39:20] the all hands on deck moment.

[00:39:21] Like we just need everyone moving forward

[00:39:23] towards this goal

[00:39:24] and everyone's doing it in their own way.

[00:39:25] But I really want to thank you

[00:39:27] for taking the time.

[00:39:29] And I really appreciate your team

[00:39:30] reaching out and connecting us

[00:39:31] because it's hard for me to find

[00:39:33] everyone that's doing something

[00:39:34] in the CEA space.

[00:39:35] And especially what I consider you

[00:39:37] and the work you've been doing,

[00:39:38] a pioneer in this space.

[00:39:39] You've been doing it for so long

[00:39:40] and you're innovating, creating IP.

[00:39:42] And I think I love the ability

[00:39:44] to tell these stories

[00:39:44] because I don't know that a lot of people

[00:39:46] may know the work that you're doing

[00:39:48] and the innovation that you're creating.

[00:39:50] So I really appreciate this conversation

[00:39:52] and learned a lot.

[00:39:53] And I think it's going to be helpful

[00:39:54] for our listeners as well.

[00:39:55] So I appreciate you sharing your insights today.

[00:39:59] Yeah.

[00:40:00] And thank you, Harry,

[00:40:01] for having me join.

[00:40:02] Where's the best place

[00:40:03] for people to,

[00:40:04] listeners to connect with you

[00:40:05] and to learn more about Elevate

[00:40:07] and IntroVision?

[00:40:09] We have Elevate

[00:40:11] and IntroVisionGroup.com

[00:40:12] and Elevate.farm

[00:40:13] have websites

[00:40:14] where there are contact

[00:40:17] potentials,

[00:40:17] mail addresses

[00:40:18] and stuff like that.

[00:40:19] So please help me.

[00:40:21] Yeah, your team gave me those links.

[00:40:22] So we'll make sure

[00:40:23] we have those available

[00:40:23] for you as well.

[00:40:24] And we'll put those in the show notes.

[00:40:26] I really appreciate it.

[00:40:27] Thank you.

[00:40:28] Okay.

[00:40:28] Thank you very much.

[00:40:29] Thanks again for listening.

[00:40:30] Eternally grateful to my guests

[00:40:32] for spending that precious hour

[00:40:33] of time with me

[00:40:34] and sharing their story.

[00:40:35] As always, full show notes available

[00:40:37] at VerticalFarmingPodcast.com.

[00:40:39] There you'll find summaries,

[00:40:41] key takeaways,

[00:40:42] and resources mentioned,

[00:40:43] and also a back catalog

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[00:40:46] Special thanks to our

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[00:42:09] Until we meet again,

[00:42:10] here's to your health.

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