A growth facility of 3,000 sq meter with the same number of plants usually grown in a 1.5 hectare hydroponic greenhouse. That will be possible with the new hydroponic system, developed and patented by the Czech company Thorilex. The brand new automatic vertical system will be placed in an Aquaponic showroom (of 500 sq m) in the Czech Republic. While the company keeps us in the dark with the technical details for now, they are willing to share the calculation that thrives them into this market. "Saving in the greenhouse, in the space and in the operational cost."
Small plants
"The system is suitable to grow small plants, like herbs and lettuce", Marek Hrstka with Thorilex explains. "Only it can produce much more of them, thanks to the vertical stapling. The design allows the Thorilex hydroponic system to be up to 8 meters high."
He explains how mostly, aquaponic systems are used for a good PR and that there are just a few professional and working aquaponic systems. "One of the professional and working aquaponic systems will be built in the Czech Republic. With Thorilex, we went through the whole R&D process, to build something special.
The system is automatic to help the plants create a stable environment and to make harvesting much easier. The system is made from stainless steel, which according to Thorilex is the best quality material for the food production and long-life requirement.
Total savings
The biggest advantage in the whole concept is the total savings of the smaller project, Marek states. "In this industry we met the standard where everyone recalculates price of the greenhouse and the hydroponic system per one sqm. It is a wrong way to look at the projects. The hydroponic projects are made from two main components – the greenhouse and the hydroponic system. If we are able to produce up to 9 times more plants, it means that the whole project for the same production can be many times smaller. This effect brings saving in the greenhouse, in the space and in the operational cost."
Marek explains the numbers with the table below. "With our hydroponic system you can get the same production as with 1.5 ha using NFT, while if you count everything on a sqm, it is obvious that the price per sqm will be higher for the traditional systems. Biggest benefit comes in the price of the greenhouse. Another benefit would be to use lights. Because our hydroponic system is automatic the necessary number of lights is lower. Even from the operational perspective it is also much cheaper to control temperature in the small greenhouse than in the big one."
The commercial aquaponic farms
One of the issues of aquaponics is complexity of the know-how. With professionals from several fields, we went through the whole aquaponics process step by step, to design the system as simple as possible to make it more user-friendly", Marek explains. "That is also reason why we are going to introduce new products that are connected to the aquaponics: a combination of hydroponic growing and recirculating aquaculture system."
For the tech details, he keeps us in the dark a little bit longer. "It is not possible to provide further information about the products yet because of the company ordinance. Launching the products on the market is expected during the following month. In case you would like to get actual information or you have any requests, you can contact us. It will be brilliant products.
For more information:
Thorilex
General tel: +420 313 103 103