Autogrow announces its support for a global indoor agriculture hub in Kennett Township, Pa.

AUCKLAND, NZ – Autogrow, a major supplier of automated control systems for indoor agriculture facilities, has announced its support for a major public-private initiative to develop a global indoor agriculture production, research, training and service hub on the U.S. East Coast, to be located in Kennett Township, Pennsylvania.

According Darryn Keiller, CEO of Autogrow, “Kennett is already the center of the U.S. mushroom industry, producing about 1.5M lbs. of fresh product every day, all grown indoors and delivered within 48 hours of picking to markets across North America via Kennett’s extensive ‘cold-chain’ infrastructure of refrigerated packing, storage and shipping facilities. Over the coming years, that unique infrastructure is likely to attract many new facilities growing other indoor crops, such as leafy greens. This alone makes Kennett a huge potential market for our control systems.”

“But that’s just the beginning of our interest in Kennett’s very innovative initiative,” continued Keiller. “Kennett is also working with a several of the region’s world-class agriculture, engineering and business schools to develop a joint indoor agriculture research, training and innovation incubator center in Kennett, the first of its kind in a major indoor ag production area. This center will be a major asset to our rapidly evolving industry, and Autogrow very much wants to be a part of its development.”

Michael Guttman, who directs the initiative for Kennett Township, explained that “it is very important to our initiative to attract innovative ag tech companies like Autogrow to help us grow and diversify our regional indoor ag industry. But Autogrow offers a lot more than just its state-of-the-art control systems. Autogrow also has a very forward-thinking strategy that can help us adapt our extensive infrastructure to incorporate emerging trends like the Internet of Things (IOT) and ‘big data,’ which will have a huge impact on how indoor agriculture is done in the future. Working together with Autogrow and our other partners, we hope to develop a blueprint not only for Kennett, but also for a network of similar indoor agriculture hubs around the world.”