TransitionHERO is helping Growy turn their vertical farm energy system into a smart, repeatable blueprint, so the next build is faster, cheaper, and ready for a new location..
Ever tried to find locally made salad in your supermarket, only to find it’s out of season and you have to make do with the imported version? Growy is changing that. In their controlled vertical farm in Amsterdam, healthy greens grow all year round, with no pesticides, minimal water, a short supply chain, and far less land needed. It’s a glimpse of what farming can look like when it’s built for a resource-constrained future. How are they doing it?
The answer is Growy’s vertical farm. Vertical farms can grow food almost anywhere, using up to 90% less water than a field. The catch is energy: stacked crops under artificial light need careful heat and climate management, and that is exactly where a design either scales or stalls.
The client: farmers who run a tech company
Growy operates a vertical farm in Amsterdam, growing pesticide-free fresh produce indoors, close to the consumer, and supplying retailers such as Jumbo and Plus.
“They are remarkably efficient with water, they use no pesticides, and the product simply tastes good.” Marnix, TransitionHERO
What makes them distinctive is their DNA: the founders are farmers. Their hands-on, do-it-yourself mindset keeps costs low and decisions fast. It also sets a high bar for any engineering partner, to design practical and cost-effective systems.
The challenge of vertical farming is energy
The biggest sustainability question in vertical farming is not water, it is energy. Indoor farms can use far more electricity per kilo of product than a greenhouse, with industry benchmarks around 38.8 kWh per kg versus 5.4 kWh per kg. Heat and climate management therefore make or break both the carbon footprint and the business case.
In an earlier phase, TransitionHERO designed the vertical farm energy system that manages heat and climate for the current Amsterdam farm. Based on some preliminary data from Growy we:
- gathered the design assumptions and calculated the duty, capacity, equipment and line sizing;
- designed the process and control philosophy for the heat management system.
From one farm to a scalable blueprint
Now Growy is setting out to add more farms internationally. They came to us with a practical question: how do we build the next farms as efficiently as possible with the lessons learned from the current design?
Since their farm is now up and running, this changes everything. We are no longer designing on assumptions, we are designing on real operating data. We are helping Growy get the existing farm running at its best, using what we learn as the design basis for the next generation. The goal of the blueprint design is to have an even higher energy and water efficiency and lower costs per product.
The challenges we plan to tackle
Working with Growy requires us to be quick but thorough. Our challenges are:
- Making sure the control philosophy is implemented well in the final farm, not just on paper;
- Matching the client’s fast, hands-on pace;
- Protecting the business case when a low-cost, DIY instinct meets the need for a robust, scalable design.
“It is great to experience such a short design cycle, as what you design gets realized very quickly.” Marnix, TransitionHERO
We’re excited to match Growy’s pace for this project!
The lesson for other greentech scale-ups
Here is the takeaway we would share with any greentech founder: you do not always have to design the perfect plant before you build. Building the first version, running it, and improving it from real data is a legitimate and sometimes faster route to a strong design, as long as someone captures the learnings rigorously, so the next build is better, not just bigger.
Our project with Growy shows what TransitionHERO does best: sitting between an ambitious, hands-on founder team and the engineering discipline needed to scale.
👉 Building something that needs to scale? Let’s connect.