Paul Millett - InvertiGro - Ep 07

9 May

In this episode of "Let's Talk Farm to Fork", we're joined by Paul Millett from InvertiGro, who we will be talking to about how their end-to-end indoor growing solutions are addressing our global food security challenges.

invertigro.com

Transcript

[00:00:00] Alex Mospanyuk: Hi there. Welcome to "Let's Talk Farm to Fork", the PostHarvest podcast that interviews people of interest across the food supply chain. Today on our show, I am joined by Paul Millett, who is the COO of InvertiGro. InvertiGro creates tech-based solutions for the vertical farming industry, and these solutions are not only cost-effective, but they actually enable vertical farms to create sustainable and reliable produce production anywhere in the world.

So with no further delays, let's get started.

Hey, Paul, how are you today?

[00:00:27] Paul Millett: Yeah. Very well, thank you.

[00:00:28] Alex Mospanyuk: No, thank you so much for joining us. Um, you're currently in Sydney, Australia. Is that right?
[00:00:32] Paul Millett: Yeah. I'm actually in the nation's Capitol in, in, in Canberra at the moment.
[00:00:36] Alex Mospanyuk: Canberra? That's amazing.
[00:00:38] Paul Millett: Our business is in Sydney, but I'm down in Canberra with some customers at the moment.
[00:00:42] Alex Mospanyuk: Okay. Got ya. All right. Well, before we get into a Paul, tell us a little bit about yourself and besides the fact that you're currently in Canberra, what you do and maybe a fun fact about you that not many people know.
[00:00:51] Paul Millett: Yeah sure, so look, I'm obviously Australian. You've probably picked up from the accent. Um, my background is in engineering, and food manufacturing, where I was building factories in Europe and Australia for, for a time. And then a real, about 20 year career in international management consulting.
Across the planet, before deciding to become a modern farmer. Getting to, building this ah this amazing business we've now got, which is called InvertiGro.
I'm a father of three, have heaps of fun with my kids, teenage kids, love sport, travel, all that good stuff when that's possible, which is always hard these days.
As COO of InvertiGro, uh, and, and we're a startup that's fast approaching being fully commercialised as a business, we've got a lot to do. So my role covers pretty much all aspects of building our, our business.
First and foremost is building the team, an amazing team of highly capable people, functional and technical experts.
And together we're building this, this unique indoor vertical farming technology offering. So that involves products, the InvertiCube, the InvertiWall, which I'll talk to you a bit more about, and a bunch of technology to actually enable the farms to run in a really user-friendly, seamless way.
We also then provide services and support and the ongoing sort of consumables and, um, supply chain requirements for our customers. So, that's the business and, and building that business keeps me pretty busy.
One thing that people probably don't know about me. I was once an avid grass-skier of all things, when that was actually a sport, uh, and had the honour of representing Australia in my day.
And, um, yeah, we're actually racing against the US in the Pan Pacifics back in, oh, I don't only want to talk about when, but, uh, that was, that was a bit of fun, when I was younger.
[00:02:32] Alex Mospanyuk: Okay. That is so fascinating. I'm not going to lie. I've never even heard of that before. I've heard of snowboarding and obviously sandboarding even, but grass is completely new. So fair enough. That is a very interesting fact, thank you.
[00:02:43] Paul Millett: I guess some places still do it, but there's not many.
[00:02:46] Alex Mospanyuk: Yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, good on you mate. Um, continuing on from that, tell us a little bit about what you do work-wise and some fun facts about InvertiGro, especially, I know you guys have a few different technologies that you're particularly proud of, but tell us about your favorite one and how it's contributing towards agriculture right now.
[00:03:02] Paul Millett: Yeah sure. So, so InvertiGro is, is building this indoor vertical farming technology offering, and it's an end-to-end solution. So we build hardware, that's truly unique. And I can expand on that in a little while, but, our modular system allows people who may be farmers today that want to become indoor vertical farmers, or they may want to be a new entrance into this space.
Or they may be actually a business who consumes a lot of fresh produce and they actually want to vertically integrate and build a farm either adjacent to, or even within the building, um, whether they're a current manufacturing site or where they do the food service and the meal kitting, or, you know, it could be a restaurant that wants a farm on site.
So that whole range of customers, it's a B2B business, so we focus on business to business, but we're building a complete suite of solutions, including the hardware, the technology, which includes the farm management, how you run day-to-day operations for farming, but also a whole suite of recipes, for different crops.
And so a recipe for basil versus a recipe for coriander versus how to grow Pak Choi, or how to grow strawberries. We grow a whole range of different products with our technology. And so with that technology platform, it makes it super easy for people to become farmers, uh, which is one of the big issues for indoor farming is actually how hard it is to get started and how to learn how to grow indoors.
We also provide, services and support from advisory at the front end. Helping people with their business case right, through to actually building the farm, training the operators, commissioning it, so, handing that over to them, or we can stay with you for the long-term as a partner, and actually do the farming in your building.
Um, so it's an end-to-end end solution. We also provide the seeds, which is a critical component, the nutrients and the media that you grow within. So that end to end solution is what we're building.
[00:04:53] Alex Mospanyuk: Okay. Wow. That is so amazing. So it seems like from start to finish, you are helping support the vertical farming community with different technologies, and just ensure that they are involving in a healthy way. I'm sure more and more solutions are needed.
[00:05:04] Paul Millett: Exactly.
[00:05:06] Alex Mospanyuk: Yeah. Amazing. And so in terms of vertical farming, how do you think that it addresses the current global food security challenges? I mean, I know 45% of all fresh produce is wasted, and I'm sure that you see gaps in terms of how traditional farming works. So why would you say that vertical farming is the future?
[00:05:21] Paul Millett: Yeah so, I guess firstly, indoor vertical farming. One of the amazing things with this technology is that allows growers to basically grow more with less. So it's, it's sustainability focused. It uses less land, less water, less packaging if you design your supply chain, so you as close to the consumer as possible, obviously fewer food miles, which is really exciting and much less waste because we don't have the long supply chains, which is a big contributor to losing product, you know, between the farm to fork.
Without the need for herbicides or pesticides, which makes the produce amazing and, and healthy, super healthy, and it's independent of crop climate extremes. So we can literally grow all year round, which is really cool. So that ability to grow that way and this way means that we can really start to address those global food security issues, and waste being a very, very big one as you've just pointed out.
So fresh produce and particularly the perishable produce, which is, your leafy greens, your micro greens, your berries, even things like mushrooms that we grow, there's a whole range of those, salad and vegetables and an increasing range of produce that, frankly, they're the worst culprits in the supply chain for not handling and for contributing to that very big waste number you talked about, so indoor farming is really well suited to growing that produce as close to the final consumption as possible, shortening the supply chain and really reducing the waste
So, as the technology is evolving and as our systems, uh we're adding new recipes all the time. We've grown about 150 different crops to date in our technology and that's pretty cool, so we can really start to, um, you know, almost if you can imagine how you can grow it indoors, we'll find a way to do it.
And that means, we're not talking about just a few leafy greens and a couple of herbs. We can start to really look at, the staple foods as well, that makes sense to grow in this type of technology indoors. And I think, the critical thing for the food system is to grow the produce that makes sense to grow broad acre, that makes sense to grow outdoors, in a really highly efficient way, and our systems globally is set up really well for that.
That the pulses, the grains, big heavy starches, and the fruiting trees and these sort of, uh, existing staple elements to our diet, your rice and so on.
Those supply chains are well established and they can provide a big chunk of the calories we need, but the really highly nutritious, good stuff that we need to improve an increase in, in our diets, comes out of our systems you know, is really well suited to our technology.
[00:07:52] Alex Mospanyuk: All right. I got it. Thank you for that. And so with your current solutions, do you have competitors currently? Or how would you say that InvertiGro is different from any other current companies out there?
[00:08:02] Paul Millett: We absolutely have competitors. Yes. It's a, it's a competitive landscape and it's, it's one that's evolving very fast. I liken it to really the.com bubble a little while back, and some of the areas that people are waking up to and going, hang on, we can really do something amazing here.
So people are starting to wake up to it and it's starting to really take off. But for us, what we've done, is to address some of the real fundamental issues that are impeding the take-up and the adoption of indoor farming. And that's through addressing two key things, first one being cost. The cost and the affordability of the systems, both to set up, but also to operate and to get the cost of produce to a point where growers can make money and the consumers can afford to buy the produce.
And that that's something that's a major, major focus for us. That's something we've cracked. And the second thing is complexity. So the difficulty with indoor farming is, is actually, you've got a little number of components and number of elements in your system that need to work perfectly to produce the perfect basil, the perfect herb.
Um, and, and so in getting that right, and making that easy for people, we believe the adoption will be a lot higher and it's fixing a number of those concerns. So, our competitors, and I won't talk about competitors specifically, but I think that the point of difference from our competitors is that we're super flexible, we have a modular system that can grow, in a really efficient way, lots of different crops, pretty much anything you can think of that can be grown indoors, can be grown in our systems.
And that includes fodder for cattle, and it includes mushrooms, it includes berries, as well as fruiting plants, we're grown chilies and , we're growing eggplants at the moment and, uh, beans.
And then your staples as well, leafy greens, your herbs, your salads, and Asian greens, Asian vegetables. Because we've got the flexibility, it means you've got this ability to switch between different crops at different times of the year, you can do that really easily.
So when the season is looking for a certain type of crop and it's in abundance, then the market is satisfied with the local supply potentially, grow something else or grow the stuff that's being imported.
So that flexibility is a really big, big thing. The second key differentiator is the scalability, because the system is modular, we've got these growing modules called the InvertiCube, and it's like a mini farm in a box, but it actually allows you to, to grow a thousand or more plants in the size of basically two square metres by two metres high.
And in that space, we can then put that box into pallet racking to any scale you want within a facility, you could go from one in a basement or a car pack up to 10,000 in a, in a high bay warehouse.
So you could be a small scale business that wants to grow below you, you, your store, or you could be a mega farm that wants to grow and produce a whole range of crops for customers. That scalability and that flexibility of where we can deploy the farms is truly unique. There's nothing like it on the market.
Theres technology to make it smart and that makes it super easy for customers to pretty much follow the bouncing ball and grow what they need to grow. And finally we make it affordable and that's to address that cost issue.
So, by having the technology designed to be manufactured at scale and manufactured in a clever way, we can build the units to be capital effective.
We can install them fast, on the customer's site, which keeps the labour and the on-site installation costs to a minimum, but we can also do it in a building, without having to make sure it's completely hermetically sealed from pests.
You may have noticed in many indoor farming pictures will show people in, you know, in space suits, walking around because they've got to keep all the bugs out of the farm. If you get a pest in an outbreak into an indoor farm, you could lose the whole crop.
Our system is, is sealed at the cube level, literally at that mini farm level. So the pests aren't going to get into the produce, and if they did in one box, they won't get into the whole of the farm.
So it means the capital cost is, is a lot lower than other systems out there, which is a real game changer, we believe.
[00:12:09] Alex Mospanyuk: Yeah, that's amazing. And I mean, are there, or I'm sure there are, but what are the biggest challenges that you're currently seeing within vertical farming and the industry right now? And how are you and the team planning to overcome these challenges?
[00:12:20] Paul Millett: It's interesting in Australia, we're blessed with abundant land and sun and, and, you know, lots of traditional farming. We think we've, you know, we well and truly have an abundance of fresh produce. However, it's interesting looking at this, um, just a lack of awareness of alternatives. And as, as the cities are growing here and even in Canberra, but you know, it's certainly in Sydney.
The food bowl that we've built, Sydney, the city around, to start with is being built out. And so over the next 20 years, we'll go from being able to supply 20, 30% of our own produce within the food bowl that is Sydney, down to about 6% of the supply, which means supply chains have to extend, and people aren't aware of this, even in Australia, the awareness just isn't there of the issue and then what the alternatives might be.
So I think a big challenge is actually that awareness piece, I know globally. Um, you know, North America and certainly in Europe and other, increasingly now in Asia, the food security concerns are real and, and people have woken up to this. And so I think it's just about educating and people being aware of what these alternatives might be and how they can actually help them to get really good fresh, nutritious produce into those areas that really need them.
And they could be the food deserts in the cities, it could be, as I said, you know that to shorten those supply chains that are only going to get worse over time as the mega cities grow, and as the population continues to increase.
[00:13:48] Alex Mospanyuk: That's a great answer. I mean, with the awareness challenge. It's something that we're doing as well. Teaching consumers, how to not waste your food and even how nutritious their fruits and veggies actually are. And little tips and tricks to make them last longer. I mean, all of that together really does make a difference.
So that's really, really cool, and what is the biggest surprise that you've found working within the food supply chain in relation to fresh produce?
[00:14:09] Paul Millett: One of the biggest things is, is actually just awareness. I think for me of, of how little from a general consumption perspective, how, how small a percentage of people actually are buying and eating good, fresh produce from the supermarket or from the store, in Australia, I think it's less than 10% of the population actually regularly buy fresh fruit and veggies and certainly the sort of stuff that we would be producing in our systems.
And I think, you know, to improve our diets for ourselves, but our kids as well and change habits over time will really, I think there's a massive benefit to come for all of us. If we do this, which will drive, then more demand for this amazing produce, and we've got to then be ready to supply that shift or that, that increasing demand before population even grows, if the same population starts to eat more of this good stuff, then we need to be able to supply it.
So that's, that's one, one surprise. When I first sort of got into this space that I just did not realise because I guess I've pretty much had a healthy diet growing up and, uh, try to focus on putting good stuff into my body.
But not everyone does, does the same, quite, quite the same way.
[00:15:15] Alex Mospanyuk: Yeah, right.
[00:15:16] Paul Millett: So, that's, that's one thing, I think another really interesting one was it was around microgreens. So I'm not sure if you eat many or eat much in that sort of space, Alex.
[00:15:26] Alex Mospanyuk: Um, not particularly, but educate me please.
[00:15:30] Paul Millett: So, so micro greens, basically your growing, it could be broccoli. Let's talk about broccoli. So broccoli in seven days you can grow from a seed to a little chute and that little chute, actually is super tasty, and you can have it on a salad or just sprinkle it or throw it into if you're cooking, I don't know, spaghetti bolonaise or something, you can put it in, push it out without the kids, even knowing it's there.
But that little chute is so packed with good stuff, it's like 40 times the vitamins and minerals per gram of the actual mature broccoli plant. You're gonna harvest in, you know, 70 to a hundred days.
So, by growing micro greens and infusing those into our diet, it becomes a super food that we could just add without these other good stuff that we're happy to buy from uh, you know, the, the, um, good nutritional tablets and bits and pieces that we might might throw in from time to time.
So as a super food, eating literally 50 grams or, or two ounces of, of broccoli microgreens would be the same as eating 20 kilograms or 44 pounds of broccoli itself. So imagine feeding that to your kids.
Here's a little sprinkle of these awesome little, um, and then they start to eat them and go, how good are they are? My kids will just eat that. They'll sit there and just munch on a carrot of course, or, or even a cucumber. Um, but if they could start to, you start to eat micro greens as well. And it's a, it's an awesome addition to your diet without adding much, much food at all.
So perfectly suited to growing in indoor farming technology, and a real game changer for, for your diet. If you start to look at what can be done with micro greens.
[00:17:08] Alex Mospanyuk: Okay. Sign me up. I mean, this sounds like an incredible market opportunity, so I really hope that this awareness grows. And so Paul, what is something that you believe people seem to misunderstand about your line of work when it comes to fresh produce or vertical farming and what are the solutions for it?
[00:17:23] Paul Millett: Yeah. I think because of some of the imagery that's been out there in the market of these big factories with people, with space suits on walking around in a controlled environment, we do need to control the environment to grow the produce consistently and really well and at scale.
And I think that misconception with applying technology in a really smart way versus manufactured food, it's actually, beautifully grown produce free of herbicides and pesticides, better than you going to get out of the field because we don't have to kill the bugs that are there or, or add extra herbicides to stop things growing on it.
Because of that, the misconception I think is, is around it being an engineered food. It's, it's not it's, it's, it's just super fresh, super healthy and nutritious food. That's grown in an environment that means that we can grow faster, consistently, safely, free of herbicides and pesticides, close to where you want to eat it. So it's still almost, you know, growing when you, when you put it in your mouth, it's so fresh.
That I think for me is one of those big things for the industry, part of that education piece we talked about earlier.
[00:18:30] Alex Mospanyuk: Yeah, absolutely. Well, besides the awareness, are there any other pain points or blind spots that you currently see in the industry? Um, are there any solutions that you think you can potentially implement?
[00:18:40] Paul Millett: Yeah. I think the big ones are those issues I mentioned previously about the cost. And partly around, and I'm speaking to growers that have started in this, in this area or, or seeing why people have struggled to get off the ground, it's really coming down to the commercial aspects and making sure that it's affordable and they're going to make money at the end of the day as a grower, but also that the produce is then affordable from a consumer perspective.
And, you know, people understood the benefits that are coming out of this amazing produce. So that's really been a big, big focus for us is to try and leverage technology to the full and the improvements in technology that are coming through all of the time to improve that cost structure.
So that, I guess the, the good thing about some of the key cost components in our technology, in the application of indoor vertical farming, they come down to energy costs and labour costs, plus the cost of real estate.
So if you can have super high density farming in a small space, then that's a, that's a big tick that's helping. The second piece is also to be smart in how you use labour, so you're not getting rid of labour, there's still farmers that we're doing seeding, we're managing the process, we're picking and packing and, there's the requirement for jobs and you create jobs, which is awesome, but you need to keep the labour as sensible as possible just into the value adding activities, not necessarily walking around in the farm and going up and down in scissor lifts, but trying to keep the labour really efficiently deployed.
And the third thing is around the actual technology that's driving the energy costs, and that's largely our lights. So the LED technology is improving all of the time. We're seeing, a curve that's that's rapidly heading down in terms of costs and, and up in terms of yield per kilowatt hour of energy put in. The amount of light intensity that we can use, and the quality of that light to meet the needs of the plants, that the colour spectrum that the plants want.
As that continues to improve the economics are all heading up you know, improving for indoor vertical farming, where for traditional farming the supply chain is getting longer, the cost of diesel and trying to road freight produce around the country or, or get it from A to B in flight in many cases for parts of the world where they're really struggling like the Gulf states or others to grow the produce locally by improving the economics for indoor farming, we're going to solve many of those other really big, big pain points.
[00:21:11] Alex Mospanyuk: All right. Absolutely. And so with the pandemic and the quarantine, I understand that currently Australia has gone back into lockdown, unfortunately. So what kind of affect has that had on your day-to-day operations?
[00:21:23] Paul Millett: Look, I think, um, everywhere across the planet have had the challenges of, of COVID lockdowns and disruptions. For us in Australia, we we've been blessed in many ways that it hasn't gone crazy, we've got to kind of keep it contained. It's not looking great at the moment in parts of Australia with this Delta strain but nonetheless, we've been lucky that, we're gonna contain it. It has meant though, lockdowns working remotely, all those things we've all had to enjoy and endure.
For us at one point, we needed to keep the farm going to keep produce running and there was a concern that we'd have to shut down our trials and shut down what we're doing.
We actually looked to redirect some of our engineering capabilities to using our 3d printers and our, laser cutters and various things that we've got for our engineering R and D. And redirecting that to producing PPE, to making face masks and, and these things so that we can have people in doing that and also keeping an eye on the farm while we're, uh, we're doing so.
So I think everyone has found ways to be tenacious, to do some good, and help us all through this thing. Um, whilst also doing everything we can to keep businesses going, keep people in jobs. And for us, it was really about refining all of the engineering design in our product in readiness for us to get to market.
So it's a, it's certainly been an interesting time, unfortunately, you know, with a great team, lots of time on zoom and teams and all of these different media. Uh,
And the different collaboration tools. We've, we've, we've managed to keep things moving really, uh, pretty well.
[00:23:00] Alex Mospanyuk: Yeah. I mean, I often wonder if this pandemic would have happened about 30 years ago. How would we have survived without the technology that we have today? I mean, it's, it's actually crazy.
I mean, how would we have been able to communicate through facts? And I think it just in general, just being able to streamline global operations so where we've been into. So yeah, it's really lucky that we have the technology.
[00:23:20] Paul Millett: I think you're absolutely right, yeah.
I think the other silver lining has been this awareness of how fragile the food system and supply chains actually are, seeing shelves destocked and for many people in their lifetime, they're probably never, ever seen that. So, um, it's certainly been something that, that is, is a silver lining.
If, if there is such a thing for our industry in, in looking at, well, we do need more resilience in our food system. We do need to think about alternatives and, and look at what's. What's possible with technology, as you mentioned, um, helping us towards fixing the food system as well as communications.
[00:23:58] Alex Mospanyuk: Yeah, absolutely. Well, when it comes to food loss and sustainability and just bouncing off what you just said, um, what is an area related to your role that you're most curious about right now? What are the things that you are potentially interested in researching the most?
[00:24:10] Paul Millett: Yeah, I think our tagline as a business is to feed the world a smarter way. And that's what we're trying to do with our technology is bring a smarter way, and make it affordable, make it accessible to the planet.
So that's basically the DNA in our business is there to try and fix problems, identify solutions to some of these big, big things.
Um, we're constantly looking at ways to, to just make our systems more efficient. And, I mentioned earlier about looking at LED technology. That's an area that we, we stay as close as we can to so that we, as, as, as improvements coming through in the, the chips and the quality of the actual LEDs themselves and the incorporation of those to get the best outcomes for different plants, that's a big area for us to focus on and we'll continue to, to be doing that.
But, but bigger than that, I think, a really exciting area of focus for us in Australia, but, but globally is starting to talk about circular economy.
Starting to talk about systems thinking around, you know, waste streams, become value streams, go back into cycle and we use them again. And for us, if we can incorporate our technology in a really smart way with other partners that we're talking to and working with that are focused on taking your organic waste from the population, uh, converting that into energy.
That energy can then be basically used within our, our farms to produce food again. So you've got your waste to energy, to food, virtuous circle happening there. There's a whole lot of other value streams that come out of the burning of methane and converts to give you CO2, which you can sequester into the farm.
Plants love CO2, so we can use some of that waste stream CO2 and give it as food to the plants. So there's that systems thinking and circular economy thinking is something that we're really, really excited about.
[00:26:04] Alex Mospanyuk: That is so exciting. Well, what is something that you wish you would've known when you began your career in vertical farming or at least in agriculture?
[00:26:10] Paul Millett: I think to find one is going to be tricky, but, um, really, I, I think when I first set out, um, and this is about seven or more years ago, seven, or eight years ago it was a pet project with some other friends and colleagues and a few folks that were industry experts. We were looking to build a farm and indoor vertical farm in Singapore and Singapore because we believe, you know, small, small nation.
But, really, really sort of low levels of, of current, domestic product of food so everything's imported, or a very high percentage of their food is important. So we started there and in doing so we set out looking for technology off the shelf that we could build our farm and use, and it didn't exist.
And so we spent about a couple of years trying to get to a solution that we were happy with, that would work as a viable farming business. We're a little bit early, um, because the Singaporean I guess government, and, and, and at that time it was early days in looking at this, this technology.
So for us, we're probably a little bit ahead of our time. And we, we actually learned an awful lot in doing so about what the pain points are for indoor farming, what we wanted the technology to be if we were going to start a farm. So there's a lot of learnings there that actually, you know, plenty of sleepless nights and "how are we going to do this?"
If InvertiGro existed then, um, that technology was available to be able to take this modular technology, uh, set up a farm in months, not years. At a fraction of the capital costs, with technology that would make it super easy to grow what we wanted for that market, but then be able to switch crops seasonally as we needed.
And do this at a cost structure that allowed us to make profit basically from the get-go, um, that would have been a game, change it for us then.
And that's probably how we got to where we are now is, is looking at, uh, putting ourselves in the shoes of those out there that are thinking about doing this, or have started and found it hard, we're trying to solve your problems.
[00:28:09] Alex Mospanyuk: Yeah, of course, definitely. Well, Paul, as we come to a close, I just wanted to ask what is the number one takeaway that you really want our listeners to absorb from this episode
[00:28:19] Paul Millett: Thanks Alex. I think that the key thing is, you know, with the imperative to sort of feed the world in a smarter way. The future of farming is here, and InvertiGro is making it super easy and affordable for growers and those that are looking to become growers, to be able to secure their fresh produce, almost anywhere and do it profitably.
[00:28:39] Alex Mospanyuk: That's incredible. All right Paul, well thank you so, so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
[00:28:44] Paul Millett: Thanks Alex. Thanks for having me.
[00:28:45] Alex Mospanyuk: No worries. Well, that's all for today's episode of "Let's Talk Farm to Fork". Thanks for listening, and thank you Paul for joining me today.
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