Australia and New Zealand’s most prominent commercial greenhouse construction company, Apex Greenhouses, has agreed to sell a minority stake to GreenV B.V, a Dutch-based aggregator of innovative greenhouse technology suppliers worldwide.
Apex Greenhouses’ Australian Chief Executive, Folco Faber, said GreenV had taken the minority interest in line with its vision to provide world-leading complete greenhouse projects and share its knowledge and international experience.
South Australian-based Mr Faber said it had been a well-considered decision to partner with GreenV, which enabled Apex Greenhouses to leverage GreenV’s access to cutting-edge automation and emissions-reducing technologies in a rapidly advancing Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) industry.
“Projects are becoming larger and more complex,” Faber said.
“Our typical client ten years ago was a family operation. While they are still an important part of our customer base, we see larger corporate interests entering the space with heavy investment worldwide from PE, super funds and listed companies. High-tech greenhouse projects are capital-intensive, so the monetary injection is needed if we are to feed the planet.”
Apex Greenhouses constructs large-scale commercial structures for the horticultural industry in Australia and New Zealand, including university research and development projects, Botanic Gardens and packing sheds. Its most significant project to date has been a 130,000 sqm greenhouse in Victoria.
Faber said the CEA industry was experiencing rapid growth worldwide, with up to 30 per cent annual growth anticipated in the Asia Pacific region by 2026. Much of that growth was predicated on adapting to climate change, the need for more certainty in growing conditions and the need to increase volumes to cater for a growing population.
“We can see many examples locally of why things naturally move towards indoor and greenhouse-based growth. Extreme weather patterns, scarce labour, and higher water, energy, and fertiliser input costs are all causing customers to look for more efficient solutions.”
He continued that it was well known within the industry that glasshouse-grown produce uses one-fifth of the water of field-grown produce and only one-tenth of the relative land area per kilogram of produce. In the last 12 months, instances of AUD 10 lettuces and strawberries currently at AUD 7.50 per punnet, high prices will only become more prevalent unless more produce can be grown in controlled environments.
Apex Greenhouses were at a crossroads as to whether it should continue to compete with much more prominent, better-resourced groups of companies and make significant investments into its research and development activities or partner with one of these much larger groups and leverage off the knowledge and expertise they already had.
“Partnering with GreenV gives us a seat at the table, and being a minority investment, it allows General Manager of New Zealand Operations James Harris and I to retain full control of the day-to-day running of the business. Our extremely hard-working staff are now part of something much larger, which will open doors for further personal growth and development of all employees.”
This partnership will also allow the business to improve its offerings to customers. Apex Greenhouses will focus on bringing customers efficiencies in terms of energy usage, including more efficient and lower-carbon footprint energy generation for food production and automation to improve labour efficiencies.
Formerly Faber Glasshouses, Apex Greenhouses was founded in New Zealand by Dutch immigrant Leo Faber in the late 1970s. Faber quickly moved from building greenhouses to manufacturing steel-framed greenhouses locally, mimicking the Dutch-designed ‘Venlo’ glasshouse structures.
Faber and Harris have led the Australian and New Zealand operations for the past 15 and 12 years, respectively.
GreenV has international shareholdings in CEA businesses specialising in climate control, sustainable energy, heating and electrical engineering, including Voshol heating and electrical, Stolze, Prins Group and HT Verboom in the Netherlands, JV Energy Solutions in Canada and Prins USA.
GreenV COO Anneke van de Geijn added that its share in Apex Greenhouses complements its ambitions to grow the mid and high-tech greenhouse industry in Oceania.
“We see significant growth in the industry worldwide as our climate changes, and Australia is not immune. We have a great understanding of the industry, and we can share that with the Australian and New Zealand markets as we work with Apex Greenhouses,” said van de Geijn.
