When choosing LED grow lights for your indoor crops, what is of key importance is finding the right lights to optimise plant performance and maximise your yield. With sustainable LED grow lights you can also shorten growth cycles, improve quality, reduce energy usage and even influence specific plant characteristics.
Little wonder that the benefits of LED grow lights are becoming more and more appealing to growers and farmers, as the global agricultural LED grow light market size is expected to witness potential gains and register a significant CAGR over the next six years.
But what about sustainability? The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the move to a more sustainable way of working and living, but being energy efficient not only reduces your environmental footprint but also delivers a cost-saving solution for your indoor farming business, one that reduces both your CAPEX and OPEX costs. These costs are critical for making a return on your investment.
With the average vertical farm costing anywhere between approximately £1,000 to £2,000 per sqm, and the average cost of more traditional CEA methods such as greenhouses being around £250 per sqm, the finances you have poured into your set-up is nothing short of significant, so you want to ensure you are using LED grow lights that work best for you on every level. As one of our core values, sustainability has driven the need to create our new product range nurturGROW, to deliver a technology-led, environmentally friendly solution for both growers and the earth.
Here are five reasons why nurturGROW is the most sustainable LED grow light on the market:
1. Recyclable CEA lighting solution
Created with four core component parts, nurturGROW minimises the amount of materials needed to drastically cut down on waste. Backed by a 25-year product lifecycle, it ensures growers maximise use of every element over a longer lifespan, to reduce costs and generate maximum yields.
90% of all components can be recycled and 85% can be re-used to upgrade to the latest technology, in a way that aims to have less impact on the environment.
nurturGROW uses an intelligent, sustainable design using high quality, durable materials to give the perfect balance between strength and optimal performance.
Thanks to our in-house manufacturing capabilities, we have developed industry-leading, high performing LED lighting innovation using an interchangeable modular design, to provide the scale needed to commercialise the right recipe.
2. Upgradeable LED grow light technology
nurturGROW’s modular, interchangeable inner body allows you to update and change your lights whenever you need to, giving a customisable solution without compromising power or efficiency. You can upgrade components cost effectively and with no downtime, making nurturGROW easy to maintain.
Our patent-pending lights are designed to easily grow with your business, so if your growing needs change or you want to add in some of our market-leading sensor technology in the future, we can easily reconfigure or retrofit new lights to the existing structure without removing the fittings.
Instead of throwing away, we can upgrade and replace your LED grow lights, saving you 30% on future costs.
3. Sustainable LED grow lights mean high efficiency
Efficacy is one of the most important considerations when choosing the right LED grow lighting for your requirements. Highly efficient LED grow lights range from 1.5 μmol/j and up, giving up to twice as much efficacy as traditional HPS lamps.
We can deliver performances of up to 3.30 µmol/j with the aim of increasing this to 4.00 µmol/j and beyond, to deliver the ideal light recipe for your plants at a lower cost. Higher efficiency means less energy which in turn, leads to being more sustainable.
We work with you to help design the right solution to match your budgeted yields and costs. Using our lab data and light testing equipment, our in-house team of scientists can help identify the right spectral waveforms and PPFD levels by recreating various environment scenarios in one of our accredited grow chambers.
We often get asked how we create the perfect recipe for crop growth; we do this by targeting the wavelengths required. Each colour is fully adjustable to recreate the perfect lighting conditions for plant development, bringing shorter planting time, higher quality, maximised yield efficiency and more uniformity in any space.
4. Every LED grow light = 1 tree planted
As a business with sustainability as part of its core agenda, we are focused on delivering long term solutions in making food systems more sustainable.
As land becomes scarce, the earth’s resources run low and the global population is set to reach 9.7 billion in 2050, indoor farming promotes a much-needed step change in food sustainability.
That’s why for every product sold, we will donate $1 to One Tree Planted to plant one tree and support projects that help sustainable agriculture. We have joined forces as part of a mutual commitment to champion global reforestation efforts and raise awareness of the importance of ecosystem restoration. It’s our way of giving back to the environment and reducing our carbon footprint and our customers’.
5. Reduced operating costs in indoor farming = sustainable business investment
When factoring in costs, it is paramount to adopt a long-term approach. Getting the right balance of OpEx and CapEx costs in indoor farms is vital.
One of your biggest expenses is lighting, in terms of both the initial build and running costs, with up to 30% of the cost of setting up a vertical farm going towards lighting. Running those lights will account for at least a quarter of your operational costs. nurturGROW not only provides you with better light quality but it’s at lower energy costs, saving you up to a third on future costs.
Using our scalable and sustainable LED grow lights means that you reduce costs and generate maximum yields over the next 25 years. LEDs need replacing regularly, every five years or so. In most cases, that means replacing the whole lighting infrastructure. However, our modular luminaires with variable fitting lengths are designed to reduce waste – that’s both energy and space – to offer a sustainable business investment.
Investing in bespoke LED grow light technology does not always mean more expensive. It also has the potential to offer you greater returns on your investment by allowing you to grow more for less.
For accurate cost optimisation and to ensure that your LED grow lights achieve the best possible results, it is always best to work with a trusted partner that understands the innate workings of LED grow lighting to provide you with a solution that works.
To discuss how we can help further in more detail please get in touch via info@lightsciencetech.com or call 01332 410601.
Further benefits of our lighting and sensor technology can be found here.
