Finding the right suppliers for your vertical farms is always not an easy thing, especially for commercial projects. We are not able to bear a mistake as it involves not a small amount of money and investors.
Good equipment is just a basic requirement for making a successful vertical farm, more important is
How do we evaluate if it’s really good equipment for my plant?
How to guarantee that the whole system and solution will operate well?
That’s why we need to sit down with the supplier checking if they really have the capacity to do this job. Many equip suppliers have a good excuse, telling they are just providing a fancy kitchen, if end users can’t cook well, that’s the problem of the chef.
There are a few suggestions for verifying whether the vertical farming equipment supplier is qualified or not.
- As a farmer, we might not know well about the grow equipment, but we know well growing the target plants, we know the troubles we might meet during the growing and the matters we hope to solve, and the quality we want to improve. a good product must be designed well enough to make growing work easy and maintenance easy. Ask the supplier to demonstrate the workflow of the product, especially the points you think are important.
- A good supplier for engineering projects is not only able to provide a good product design but also can guarantee the customers to operate the whole system well and easy, they should be able to provide appropriate solutions on the CEA management for the target plant which you know too as a farmer. If they don’t have that knowledge how they can make a good product?
- A good supplier designs the solution according to the target plant, enabling end users to have standardized output and stable yield.
- A good solution is supposed to be a great value for the money, to help end users save unnecessary costs. A good indoor farming solution should be able to operate the simpler the better, to make a real user-friendly design to decrease the risk of failure.
FYI
Reinfa believes that the key to successful indoor farming is harmonious interaction between growers and equipment. Equipment should be designed not only for growing plants, but also for optimizing users’ workflow. A good vertical farming equipment supplier should consider the needs of both plants and growers. Good equipment should be an extension of the grower’s abilities, helping them maximize their work efficiency and providing a safe and comfortable user experience.