MONTRÉAL - In 2020, Sollum Technologies first received $5.25M in funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) to begin testing Sollum's unique smart LED grow light solution for greenhouse pepper production. Building on their groundbreaking success using dynamic lighting to grow Canada's first commercial crop of winter peppers, Sollum™ now enters the second phase of funding with SDTC receiving $2.5M from them to jumpstart a demonstration project valued at $14M to highlight the lighting solution's benefits for the production of greenhouse tomatoes with partners SAVOURA Group, Prism Farms and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Harrow Research and Development Centre (Harrow RDC).
SDTC's mission is to fund companies that offer clean tech solutions that exemplify the principles of sustainable development. With the help of SDTC, businesses like Sollum can accelerate their success in competitive markets and ensure the wealth of clean tech jobs across Canada. The economic prosperity created by SDTC is matched by their environmental contributions with estimated reductions of 22.4 megatonnes in emissions annually, thanks to SDTC-funded companies.
Sollum's dynamic LED grow light solution offers a proven method of improving greenhouse sustainability. By dynamically recreating and modulating the full spectrum of the Sun's natural light, and by automatically compensating for changes in the ambient light spectrum and intensity, Sollum's LED light fixtures contribute to optimizing plant growth conditions and greenhouse energy efficiency. Partners SAVOURA Group and Prism Farms, both specializing in greenhouse tomato production in Québec and Ontario, respectively, will host demonstrations in dynamic greenhouse lighting and further put Sollum's unique sustainable solution to the test. Recent research conducted at Harrow RDC, which includes Sollum's sustainable solution in some of its projects, will propel Sollum as a company backed by data, leading science, diverse partnerships, and environmentally responsible innovation. Each of the greenhouse operating partners will demonstrate dynamic lighting on one hectare of growing space while Harrow RDC will be expanding their collection of Sollum light fixtures for research on top of what they implemented during the SDTC phase one funding. As was done with the greenhouse pepper project, new light spectra and photoperiod protocols developed and researched by Harrow RDC will be easily made available to the public via published data which will support SAVOURA Group and Prism Farms via the SUN as a Service® platform.
Source : Cision