Nongshim, a South Korean food and beverage company, will export smart farms to Saudi Arabia following the UAE.
Nongshim announced on March 12 that it had signed an MOU with Saudi Arabia to export smart farms.
Previously, Nongshim formed a consortium with "Pomit", a smart farm plant information technology company, "Agro Solution Korea" and "MS". This MOU was signed between these consortiums and a Saudi Green House company, and Saudi Green House is a leading agricultural product cultivation and distribution company in Saudi Arabia. Nongshim is in charge of designing and manufacturing smart farm systems.
With the signing of the MOU, Nongshim plans to install a smart farm in Saudi Arabia that can produce Korean varieties of strawberries all year round. Korean strawberries are famous all over the world for their size, sweetness and taste. The total business scale of this smart farm project is $30 million, and Nongshim plans to create new business opportunities worth more than $100 million with high value-added crops in the future.
An official from Nongshim said, “We expect that this MOU will not only promote the excellence of Korean smart farm technology to Saudi Arabia, but also contribute to agricultural development and food self-sufficiency.” We plan to further expand our business.”
Meanwhile, a consortium of four companies, including Nongshim, signed an MOU with Al Marina Holdings, a local hotel, distribution, and catering company in the UAE, for the installation and operation of Strawberry Smart Farm in January.
Nongshim established a potato research center in Pyeongchang, Gangwon-do in 1995 and began research on smart farms. At the time, Nongshim developed potato varieties and produced and distributed them to improve the quality of snacks. In addition, basic technical skills were built up by researching varieties and hydroponics technologies for various crops used in food production.
Since then, Nongshim has accelerated technology development by creating a vertical farm in the Anyang plant in 2008. Business started in earnest. In November of last year, it exported a container-type smart farm for the first time to Oman, taking a step forward in entering the global market.
In Nongshim Smart Farm, all basic conditions necessary for growing plants, such as temperature, humidity, CO2 content and amount of light, are automatically managed by self-developed software. In addition, by mixing fertilizer with water and supplying nutrients through hydroponic cultivation, the possibility of contamination due to impurities in the soil is blocked at the source, guaranteeing both the safety of agricultural products and the stability of cultivation.
In particular, Nongshim's unique advantage is that it is a 'one-stop service' that self-develops everything from shelves and beds for growing crops to lighting and air conditioning control systems. This is because all conditions can be optimized according to the characteristics of the crops to be grown. After that, improvement measures according to the change of crops can be carried out quickly.
An official from Nongshim said, “We will actively advance into the global market with technology that is second to none even if we put it on the world stage, and develop the smart farm business as a new growth engine for Nongshim.”
