AGRITECH
EASTERN ONTARIO BUSINESS JOURNAL FALL 2023
There are many advantages to controlled environment agriculture (CEA), such as year-round production, input efficiency, crop quality, better control of plant pests and diseases, and independence from both climate and arable land.
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This company, called Smart Greens, operated for the next six years. However, while Bergeron and Amyot were happy with the ZipGrow growing towers in the container, they were not happy with the repurposed shipping container itself and decided to improve the design and to manufacture containers purpose-built for the Canadian climate. They proceeded to do so under a new company called Modular Farms. Around the same time, they also acquired Canadian distribution rights to the complete range of ZipGrow growing systems. Amyot later moved away with Modular Farms on his own, while Bergeron and Lang stayed with what became known as ZipGrow Inc. As Bergeron notes, it is amazing to see how all these developments have occurred to a great extent independently of each other in Eastern Ontario. While the companies have periodic business dealings with each other, Bergeron says they are still more of a cluster than an integrated or synergistic hub or ecosystem.
ZipGrow Inc. Partly thanks to Bergeron’s skills as an indoor farmer, Lang’s background in plastic manufacturing and the
salesmanship of Eric Levesque, ZipGrow experienced tremendous growth over the next few years. However, in mid-2020 during the pandemic, differing views over future directions led Bergeron and Levesque to leave ZipGrow to form their own company, Cultivatd. With Lang as its president and majority shareholder, ZipGrow has continued to pursue international projects, especially in the Middle East, where it is associated with the planning for “The Line,” the futuristic city under construction in Neom, Saudi Arabia. It has also been introducing its ZipGardens to local schools, along with curriculum guides on hydroponic classroom gardens.
Cultivatd With Levesque as CEO and Bergeron as chief operating officer, Cultivatd appears to be a new form of company — a broker of CEA services, similar to an insurance brokerage. It bills itself as an “indoor farm
brokerage,” helping to arrange the sale and purchase of indoor farms, vertical farming systems and other agriculture services. As Bergeron explains, now that the CEA sector has matured, the time is ripe for his type of company. Thanks to a US$3-million seed investment in late 2021 from Resilient Earth Ventures (REV), a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, Calif., Cultivatd has continued to expand its reach and, according to its co-founders, is currently close to unveiling a new $100-million equity fund with Cultivatd as the general manager.
Fieldless Farms In 2017, two Ottawa residents, Jon Lomow and Paul Gardner, co-founded Fieldless with a vision to replace an increasing proportion of Canada’s traditional imports of leafy greens and similar produce. According to Lomow, Cornwall’s geographic location made it an ideal site for Fieldless’s first CEA farm in a former warehouse on the city’s outskirts, where it now has three separate “farms” under the same roof. From this site, Fieldless produces two brands of lettuce and one type of mushroom for all Farm Boy outlets in Ontario, as well as other customers. James Bray, assistant produce manager in the Farm Boy store in Cornwall, says a key competitive advantage of these products is their fresh taste and long shelf life. In July 2022, Fieldless raised $13.5 million in a Series A round and, according to Lomow, is currently on the way to securing another round.
Canobi AgTech Near Maxville, Robin Vincent, an entrepreneur with a track record in plumbing, big data systems and medical
cannabis production, decided to switch the focus of his company, Canobi AgTech (founded in 2014), to its own proprietary software platform for greenhouses, vertical farms and outdoor farms. Vincent is generally regarded in the industry as “a bit of genius” and is regularly a speaker at international conferences. Vincent says that he is “agnostic” with regard to the relative advantages of the various growing systems in the sense that he does not necessarily recommend one over the other. In July, he was named director of innovation for the North American Chapter of the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) while his wife, Catherine Borelly, was named the chapter board’s executive director.
Kyan Culture In 2018, a year after graduating in business administration from La Cité, the francophone post-secondary college in Ottawa, Sam Doucet founded Kyan Culture in Vankleek Hill, east of Ottawa. Kyan Culture produces a range of certified-organic sprouted grain products that have been adopted as the in-house brand by a major Ontario food retailer. Doucet says that his company’s intention is to expand into Quebec via another major food retailer.
The Growcer Ottawa-based The Growcer was founded by Corey Ellis and Alida Burke in 2016 and first came to national attention through a successful pitch on Dragons’ Den. The Growcer sells specially designed weatherproof containers that grow leafy greens and herbs hydroponically using light, carbon dioxide and nutrient-rich water. The company’s units have become almost the generic name for container farms with installations across the country, including several in the Cornwall area. While the company was already gaining momentum before the pandemic, Burke said in late 2021 that orders were pouring in as supply chain bottlenecks and surging transportation costs drive up food bills.