For the second time in the past week, an LED lighting company has teamed with a climate control enterprise to offer combined services in the horticultural sector, on this occasion taking specific aim at indoor vertical farms — which use all artificial lighting.
Signify said it has joined forces with fellow Dutch outfit Hoogendoorn Growth Management, a company that provides automated systems for monitoring and controlling conditions in greenhouses and vertical farms.
Hoogendoorn, based in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands, refers to its combined software and hardware as a greenhouse control system called IIVO. The system can connect to lights, sensors, smart cameras, irrigation units, and robotics, gathering data while also monitoring factors such as temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, and water usage.
According to Hoogendoorn, IIVO applies algorithms and machine learning to make control decisions.
Eindhoven-based Signify said the partnership integrates lighting into the system.
“Through our collaboration, we simplify the daily work for growers,” said Anne Jancic, segment manager — vertical farming for Philips Horticulture LED Solutions. “With a consolidated system that allows a full and easy integration of the lighting system into the customer's infrastructure, we enable them to manage and monitor their crops more efficiently and to scale faster.”
The system’s algorithms “support decision making and execution when it comes to deviations from ideal crop growth compared to actual measured plant development,” she added.
The announcement from the two companies came shortly after Montreal-based lighting company Sollum Technologies joined forces with Canadian climate control automator Damatex Inc.
The partnerships reflect a renewal of activity in horticultural lighting, which has been picking up again following a stagnant period that began around mid-2022.
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Mark Halper | Contributing Editor, LEDs Magazine, and Business/Energy/Technology Journalist
Mark Halper is a freelance business, technology, and science journalist who covers everything from media moguls to subatomic particles. Halper has written from locations around the world for TIME Magazine, Fortune, Forbes, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Guardian, CBS, Wired, and many others. A US citizen living in Britain, he cut his journalism teeth cutting and pasting copy for an English-language daily newspaper in Mexico City. Halper has a BA in history from Cornell University.
