We design and build cutting-edge turn-key vertical farming technology and offer a suite of services for controlled environment agriculture operators.
But that didn’t happen overnight.
We are a family business with over 35 years of experience in controlled environment agriculture.
It all began in the 1980s when Esa Kivioja started a tomato farming company. Operations went fully organic in the early 2000s and eventually became the largest organic tomato farming operation in Finland.
But what has that got to do with vertical farming technology?
In 2007, Esa retired from active farming, sold the tomato farming operations, and a new company was born run by the next generation of the Kivioja family: Johanna, Sanna, and Niko.
This was the start of Netled, a company focused on researching, developing and designing technology for controlled environment agriculture.
As the northernmost agricultural country in the world, Finland has only a few hours of daylight in mid-winter, and temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius. The cost of lighting and heating greenhouses in the winter is extremely high. The need for a more efficient system was clear.
Years of hands-on experience in indoor agriculture in Finland’s challenging climate combined with technical engineering expertise gave the Kivioja family all the prerequisites to develop a new system for growing – one that would remove the climate from the equation and allow them to grow crops year-round.
The result is our family of Vera vertical farming systems that integrate our LED lighting technology, irrigation and nutrition system, HVAC and heat recovery system, dynamic spacing system, and automation software.
Our experiences in providing vertical farming systems to customers around the world has also shown us that the technology is not enough. Climate change, food security, and sustainability challenges are producing startups in the controlled environment agriculture space that have ambitious ideas, but they need help to go from the business idea to design and planning to implementation. They also need support and maintenance after the vertical farm is commissioned. Our service business model helps startups and established operators alike achieve their ambitious plans.
