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Celebrating ten years of LED light innovation and working with Signify

TWO ground-breaking Vertical Farms, a state-of-the-art indoor strawberry farm and a year-round tomato growing facility.

Having officially celebrated our ten-year anniversary of working in partnership with Signify, these horticultural highlights are just some of the projects we’ve enjoyed working on together.

With plenty of interesting proposals in the pipeline, the management and strategy teams from Signify and CambridgeHOK remain confident the next decade will be just as exciting.

Nathanael Dannenberg, Commercial Leader for UK & Ireland at Signify, said: “We have a long-standing relationship with CambridgeHOK that continues to grow from strength to strength. Together, in the past decade, we have worked on some major horticultural projects that have paved the way for innovation and growth in the Vertical Farming industry in particular.

“Working with CambridgeHOK, our close collaboration has allowed us to learn about growing new crops and soft fruits under LED lighting. We have learned how to use light efficiently so we can tailor the spectrum, intensity and photo period for each individual location and crop.

"We believe the groundwork and knowledge we have acquired will allow LED to become mainstream. We expect the rollout to continue at pace and anticipate working together on exciting projects for a long time to come."

A game-changer for growers

Signify, formerly known as Philips Lighting, has always had a vital role to play in our most pioneering projects.

Thanks to the expertise of their lighting division, we were able to help APS Salads and Flavour Fresh Solfresh Group move from a 10-month crop growth cycle to all year round, using 100% LED lighting to increase the yield and quality of their tomatoes.

APS Salads and its Wight Salads site, on the Isle of Wight, is now a leading supplier to many of the UK’s leading food retailers.

The same can be said for Flavour Fresh, based in Southport, who are also a major UK salad producer – supplying leading supermarkets with Sweet Rosso, Piccolo, Santini and Tomkin varieties of tomatoes.

Unsurprisingly, it was Signify who were our first choice for lighting when we designed and built the Harvest London vertical farm in Leyton, retrofitting a former industrial unit with solid-state lighting (SSL) to grow a variety of herbs and leafy greens for use by top London restaurants.

More recently, we used their LED lighting systems and Signify flowering lamps to aid winter production at Dyson Farming – the new multi-million pound indoor strawberry production facility in Lincolnshire.

Having proven that LED lighting can be a game-changer for growers, CambridgeHOK and Signify anticipate that there will be real excitement and investment interest from within the industry during the next five to 10 years.

Practical and profitable innovations

Patrick Harte, Joint Managing Director and Shareholder at CambridgeHOK, said: “All of the innovative projects we’ve worked on together with Signify during the last ten years are testament to how LED light can have a positive impact on production and profitability.

“Not only does it bring reliability in terms of yield and taste, it allows you to grow fruit and vegetables all year round.

“We know how keen growers are to remove the uncertainty caused by the weather. By working in partnership with us, growers benefit from unrivalled expertise and can feel assured their investing in technology which delivers a proven return.

“I’ve no doubt that the next decade of working in partnership with Signify will deliver solutions and ideas that are just as innovative.”

If you’re a grower who wants to find out more about any aspect of agricultural LED lighting, please call 01430 449440 for an informal discussion.

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