US startup Plenty, Alpha Dhabi plan US$680 million vertical farms

US FARMING startup Plenty Unlimited and a unit of United Arab Emirates’s Alpha Dhabi Holding are targeting US$680 million of investments over the next five years to develop farms in a region which imports a majority of its food requirements.

Plenty and Alpha Dhabi’s unit Mawarid plan to develop their first indoor vertical farm to produce strawberries in Abu Dhabi at a cost of over 500 million dirhams (S$183 million), according to a statement on Thursday (Jul 18). It will have the capacity to produce over two million kg of the fruit annually from 2026.

The oil-rich Gulf nations import about 85 per cent of their food due to the lack of arable land, while increasing temperatures will only make it harder to sustain farming.

This is prompting governments to look for ways to develop local production, including investing in technologies such as vertical and hydroponics farming. Vast and relatively cheap energy in the region are likely to help reduce costs for these techniques.

The strawberries produced from the first Abu Dhabi farm has been pre-committed to Driscoll’s.

“This joint venture enables us to leverage the most advanced farming technology in the world to grow local food supply throughout” nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council, said Mawarid chief executive officer Kashif Shamsi. BLOOMBERG