A few years ago, a group of farmers from Huelva, the most important strawberry-producing province in Spain, contacted New Growing System in search of solutions. With our company’s help, these growers switched from traditional soil-based strawberry cultivation to NGS-berry, which is brand name of our berry product line which helped them optimize production and maximize profits. However, the challenge now was different. Growers felt they needed to innovate because they had reached their production limit in international markets in relation to other labor-intensive competitors from developing countries. This is how the seed of the idea to design our rotational system was planted.
Based on these conditions, New Growing System started working on a system which should be effective and efficient, ergonomic in terms of planting and harvesting and, most importantly, increase production in existing facilities. After testing several preliminary concepts, we came up with the idea of using two rotating trays, one on top and the other at the bottom. Three years of development and testing allowed us to integrate numerous innovations into our rotational system, including a solar tracker used to optimize solar radiation on all strawberry trays, which tilt depending on the Sun’s position in order to properly capture solar rays.
As a farmer and investor, you are probably wondering about the costs and payback periods. Aware of it, one of our goals throughout this process was to ensure easy system installation and maintenance, all with the aim of offering top crop yield performance. Compared to a traditional hydroponic system for strawberries, the rotational NGS-berry system doubles production, whereas in relation to traditional strawberry soil cultivation, the production increase ranges between 70 – 80% because in addition to all the advantages of hydroponics, it is no longer necessary to have rows for heavy machinery movement (e.g. tractors). Despite this excellent performance, we believe it is possible to further innovate, which is why we are collaborating with one of our partners to test an automated harvesting process capable of operating 24/7 all year round. This will certainly increase options for farmers and investors. Simply unbeatable.
With regards to harvesting practices, the rotational system features the same ergonomic advantages of traditional hydroponics, thus simplifying and increasing the efficiency of the planting and harvesting processes. In our regular interaction with large strawberry growers who purchased our rotational NGS-berry system in Spain, UK, Portugal and USA, all of them tell us how satisfied they are with the product, both in terms of profitability and improved labor and food safety and hygiene conditions. Based on our experience marketing these products, we intend to further grow in these countries, but also to open new possibilities in other destinations such as Korea, Japan, Russia, France and Australia.
