30% tower cost reduction
Over the summer and during various grow-trial testing periods, Affinor took the opportunity to redesign certain aspects of the tower technology with the goal to reduce overall cost by 20%, improve plant resource availability and versatility. New ideas were conceived and prototyped with their supplier located in Port Coquitlam. By reducing the amount of parts and simplifying various fabrications, the overall financial objective was exceeded with a total cost saving of 30% per tower.
The towers have an estimated useful life of 20 years so a 30% reduction allows farmers to amortize the reduced cost at a lower rate and reap more financial benefits from the optimized growing conditions.
Organic certification potential
In parallel, the new design improvements upgrade the tower to allow growers to be certified as compliant for organic certification under current Canadian regulations pertaining to the amount of volume and depth of organic soil required per plant as well as improved light penetration by introducing a new tiered level approach. Improved versatility was achieved by designing a universal growing arm that now fits custom plastic inserts to maximize density during the plant growing cycle and accommodate different types of plants.
Jarrett Malnarick, President & CEO, commented, "We are very happy about the design improvements that occurred over the last several months and believe our growing technology can offer cost effective solutions to a variety of markets. These improvements will allow organic certification and enhanced growing environments for fresh fruit, produce and cannabis plants as well as offer versatility within the plant's life cycle or types of product to be grown.”
For more information
Affinor Growers