The seeds of success

We are situated in Berlin-Spandau, near Lake Tegel, in an old Siemens washing machine factory that was abandoned in the nineties. At the entrance to the business park, signs point to the theatre production of “The Last Days of Mankind”. Below this, the signpost to Infarm points in the opposite direction. Infarm has been operating its “growing farm” here since the end of 2016, one of 15 centres worldwide. Around 120 of the 400 employees in Berlin work in the R&D department to develop new products and procedures.

“This is where a whole new level of diversity is emerging,” says Guy. “Food chemists, biologists, agronomists and data specialists are researching the best combination of humidity, water supply, nutrients and other factors. This is the beating heart, where it all begins.” Guy guides us through the laboratory and the production halls. It is warm, the humidity is reminiscent of a greenhouse and there is a constant hum in the air. The laboratory is equipped with some of the glass shelving, the in-store farming units, which are also found in the supermarkets. Lemon balm, coriander, sage, basil and thyme are growing in these units at the moment, all of which are already part of Infarm’s product range. Still, various parameters of the “growing recipes” are tested and optimised here: how many seeds are needed for the different plants, when is the best time to harvest them, what nutrients do they need and how many, what light spectra and how much water are required, how high do humidity and temperature have to be?

Infarm’s success story began in 2013, in a shared flat in the Neukölln district of Berlin. Guy Galonska, his brother Erez and his partner Osnat Michaeli had come to Germany from Israel – “motivated by the personal desire to eat healthy food, fresh and direct, and to turn this idea into a start-up.” Actually, they wanted to open a restaurant. They conducted their first experiments with vertical farming and hydroponics in a converted Airstream caravan. “We didn’t have any idea yet about which direction we wanted to go in but learned a lot about the different markets and realised pretty quickly that there was a big need everywhere for smaller farms that could be operated in supermarkets.”

In just eight years, they have successfully built a company with more than 1,000 employees worldwide that has already received over 300 million dollars in funding – and is currently operating in eleven countries, including Germany, France, the USA, the UK, Canada, Japan, Denmark and, most recently, the Czech Republic. What was the most important decision along the way? “To focus on grocery shops,” Guy replies. “We quickly realised that it was the best way to reach as many people as possible.” The first farm was at Metro in Berlin in 2016, a pilot project that quickly went viral. They now do about 90 per cent of their sales with 30 of the world’s major food retailers – including Aldi Süd, coop, Edeka, Safeway, Intermarché and Metro – and are expanding their cooperation with online food retailers.

Fast growth depends on capital: “Infarm has the potential to revolutionise food production in the long term. The Infarm team impressed us from the start, we have been invested with Cherry Ventures since the first round of financing. It is a privilege to see how Infarm has evolved from an ambitious start-up in a Kreuzberg courtyard to a key player in vertical farming,” says Filip Dames, one of the founding partners of the Berlin VC fund Cherry Ventures, which has been involved in Infarm since 2017 and in which KfW Capital has invested.