2022年12月22日

欧洲的能源危机正迫使企业改变战略或倒闭。该行业的未来悬而未决。要重温这篇文章，请访问我的个人资料，然后查看保存的故事。今年6月，一个巨大的新垂直农场在英国贝德福德镇郊区开业。在盛大的开幕仪式上，英国国会议员们听说，这座闪闪发光的工厂有朝一日将每年生产2000万株植物。这是欧洲垂直农业公司Infarm的最新开业，该公司已筹集了超过6亿美元的风险投资，承诺未来蔬菜将在堆满LED灯的高科技仓库中种植，而不是在露天田野或温室中种植。但是现在贝德福德农场的未来看起来并不光明。11月29日，Infarm的创始人通过电子邮件宣布，他们将裁员“约500名员工”——超过员工总数的一半。这封电子邮件详细介绍了该公司缩减在英国、法国和荷兰业务的计划，并将注意力集中在与零售商联系更紧密、最终盈利机会更高的国家。今年9月，Infarm已经裁员50人，理由是需要降低运营成本，专注于盈利能力。 Just six months ago, the vibe from Europe’s biggest vertical farm company was unrelentingly optimistic, so what changed? According to Cindy van Rijswick, a strategist at the Dutch research firm RaboResearch, several pressures that have always existed for vertical farms have really come to a head in 2022. For starters, the industry is extremely vulnerable to increases in electricity prices. Powering all of those plant-growing LEDs uses a lot of electricity, and between December 2020 and July 2022 consumer energy prices in the EU went up by nearly 58 percent . Eighteen months ago, European vertical farms might have spent around 25 percent of their operational costs on electricity, but that might have gone up to around 40 percent, estimates van Rijswick. At the same time, investors are starting to tighten their belts and look for faster routes to profitability. Vertical farms are expensive to build compared with conventional outdoor farms. AppHarvest—a US-based firm that builds high-tech greenhouses—has struggled to find enough cash to fund its ongoing operations despite going public in 2021. In its latest quarterly report the company said there is “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue into the future. The poor global financial outlook is also putting pressure on consumers. Most vertical farms grow herbs, shoots, and other leafy salad vegetables. Leafy greens are the industry’s go-to produce because they grow quickly under LEDs and have a short shelf life and premium price point. But with inflation high, consumers might prefer to forgo expensive vertically farmed herbs for something a little more budget-friendly. That’s particularly true for European vertical farms. “The European market is a difficult place for vertical farming because there’s so much competition from crops that are grown in fields or greenhouses,” says van Rijswick. Vertical farms might stand a better chance of surviving if they look further afield, to countries where energy is cheap and growing crops outside is difficult. One obvious place is the Middle East. Gulf Cooperation Council countries—a group made up of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—import around 85 percent of all their food and 56 percent of their vegetables. “When choosing new markets to expand to and establish a farm, we are going to look to places that have an increasing need for food production and food security,” Infarm founder Erez Galonska told the Vertical Farming Congress in Abu Dhabi on December 14. One of the world’s largest vertical farms opened earlier this year in Dubai . The facility is nearly three times the size of Infarm’s Bedford growing center and supplies leafy greens for the Emirates airline and local stores. Most Popular