News
LEDs in spotlight of new urban farm in Japan

Sept. 19, 2014, Osaka, Japan – GreenClocks New Generation City farm – a
new city farm of Osaka Prefectural University Japan that uses Philips
GreenPower LED production modules – is open for business. 

Sept. 19, 2014, Osaka, Japan – GreenClocks New Generation City farm – a new city farm of Osaka Prefectural University Japan that uses Philips GreenPower LED production modules – is open for business. 

The project exclusively uses artificial lighting.

GCN City farm has been set up in an effort to promote city farms and to encourage operations on an industrial scale to produce delicious and safe fresh vegetables for consumers.

Furthermore, the farm will make a social contribution in the agricultural field by offering a verification model in which corporations, universities and the government are closely involved.

GROUNDBREAKING TECHNOLOGY

GCN City farm is expected to function as a central site that promotes the development and use of groundbreaking technology in factory plants.    
 
GCN City farm will produce leafy vegetables, such as lettuce, every day.

Companies associated with Osaka Prefectural University will soon be able to conduct business trials from production to sale.

HARVESTING BEGINS EARLY NEXT MONTH

As the sales operation behind GCN City farm, GreenClocks will start selling the vegetables produced by the farm under the ‘Gakuensai’ brand beginning in early October.
 
Philips Horticulture LED Solutions has supplied GCN City farm with 13,000 LED GreenPower LED production modules for growing vegetables.

The GreenPower LED production module is an LED module that produces far-red light and is the first of its kind to be installed in Japan for multi-layer cultivation. (This is the first one made by Philips [2013]. Whether or not the module produces far-red LED light depends on product specs.) 

FAR-RED WAVELENGTH

Producing optimal light in the far-red wavelength, it is expected that the GreenPower LED production module will deliver twice the output of an HF fluorescent lamp for the same electricity consumption, according to research carried out by Kazuhiro Akima, Yuji Miyasaka, and Jun Konishi.

In addition, this LED production module can save up to 55 per cent energy compared with a conventional fluorescent lamp.