Netled Research and Development Center

We are continuously developing our Vera® technology to allow our customers to be able to grow a wider range of crops. The latest addition to our range of Vera® products is Vera® Berry, a vertical farming system designed specifically for high-volume growers of various types of berries.

Vera® Berry is a vertical farming solution suitable for growing strawberries or other continuous harvest cultivars and cultivars with similar growing space requirements such as cloudberry, or arctic raspberry. The Vera® Berry vertical farm utilizes all the benefits of controlled environment agriculture such as minimized growing risks, balanced year-round yield, and obviated pesticides and herbicides. Vera Berry has it all, its components elegantly designed to work in perfect harmony. From lighting to irrigation, everything is easily controlled via Vera® automation. Vera® Berry brings harvesting into one location and dramatically reduces logistics and enables more plants per square meter than traditional strawberry cultivation methods.

Our Vera® Berry system has been tested at the Northernmost vertical farm in the world in Kajaani, Finland. Read more.

As testament to our Vera® Berry system, Finnish MTV News visited our demo-facility where Vera® Berry strawberries won the taste-test hands down against strawberries grown under the North African sun. Read more.

Variable spectrum LEDs

Our research into LED lighting solutions has allowed us to produce adjustable-spectrum LED lights, which are currently being used for cutting-edge research at Kainuu Vocational School and The Natural Resources Institute Finland into the effects of different light wavelengths on the growth of different plants at different stages.

We have combined three lighting units with LEDs of different spectra and developed software that automatically adjusts the intensity of the LEDs in relation to one another. This setup allows for an extremely broad range of adjustment throughout the spectrum allowing us to offer very different systems according to customer requirements.

Dynamic spacing

In our Vera® systems there are over 40% more plants in the growing area and even 8 times more in the floor area than in similar open field or traditional greenhouse cultivation. We use FIFO, that is, First In – First Out flow through growing. Our proprietary dynamic spacing software automatically adjusts the position and crop density of the plants relative to one another along the crop cycle so that light can get through to lower leaves as the plants grow and the amount of foliage increases. This results in more even growth and a better quality end product.

Netled’s R&D team consists of high-level professionals, mechanical and automation engineers, and horticultural experts.

The R&D team has a wide range of responsibilities from plant and substrate testing to automation software development and robotics. Designing and building our Vera® vertical farming systems requires knowledge and expertise from many different fields, that why our diverse R&D team consists of experts in engineering, horticulture, and documentation.