Vertechly / Gothenburg, Sweden
We build your farm.
Indoor farms built under your brand, in your market. You bring the customers. We bring the growing.
- 1Growing plane, ~90°
- 2LED, both faces
- 3Airflow across the face
- 4Crop grows outward
- 5Staggered planting
- 6Closed nutrient loop
You know your market. We know how to grow.
Vertechly builds indoor farms that food providers run in their own market, under their own label. You are not buying vegetables from another supplier — you are building the ability to grow them.
We supply the technology, the crop recipes, the systems and the operating knowledge. You supply the market, the customers and the brand. The farm is yours; what we bring is the part that takes years to learn.
We are not describing something theoretical. We designed this system, built it, and ran it as a commercial farm for three and a half years before offering it to anyone else.
See how it worksFig. 01
The GrowWall™, in production
Gothenburg
Planes repeated down the length of the hall, up to 6 m high
Two things get called vertical farming. Only one of them is vertical.
Most "vertical" farms are horizontal farms stacked on top of one another — flat trays in warehouse racking. The growing plane is still parallel to the floor. You have simply built more floors.
True vertical rotates the growing surface itself to roughly 90°. Plants grow out of a continuous upright plane, into open air, lit across the face. That single decision changes the light, the airflow, the structure and the cost.
Diagram — Growing plane orientation
~90° · up to 6 m high
Fig. 02
One plane, seen face on
Gothenburg
Every head lit equally — no tier above casting shade
Six things that go wrong when produce travels.
Every one of these is a cost you are already paying. Growing in-market does not remove them all — it moves them somewhere you can control.
01
Import dependency
Produce arriving from another country carries that country's weather, currency and border delays into your business. Growing it in your own market removes three variables you have no say over.
02
Deliveries you cannot plan around
A shipment that slips two days is a gap on a shelf and a call from a chef. Production a short drive from the customer is scheduled rather than awaited.
03
Logistics cost that only rises
Distance is the one input in fresh produce that never gets cheaper. Cutting it out is the only lever that compounds in your favour year after year.
04
Quality that varies by container
Crops grown to a fixed recipe indoors arrive at the same size and grade every week. Light, feed and climate are set, not inherited from a season.
05
A margin split too many ways
Each party between the field and your customer takes a share and adds a day. A shorter path returns both the margin and the freshness.
06
Produce that carries someone else's name
Buying wholesale builds a supplier's brand. Growing under your own label builds an asset that stays with you.
Four things happen inside the building.
01 — Grow
Vertical plane
Plants grow outward from a continuous upright surface into open air, so no plant sits under another.
- 1Growing plane
- 2Crop position
- 3LED, both faces
- 4Open air, no tier above
Fig. 03aPlane elevation
02 — Feed
Recirculating hydroponics
Nutrient-dosed water on a closed loop. What the crop does not take up returns to the system.
- 1Reservoir
- 2Pump
- 3A / B dosing
- 4EC and pH probes
- 5Growing plane
- 6Return to reservoir
Fig. 03bFeed circuit
03 — Control
Light, air, climate
Per-crop light and nutrient recipes, with airflow and humidity held to setpoint rather than inherited.
- 1Photoperiod, 16 h
- 2Dark, 8 h
- 3Climate held to setpoint
- 4Per-crop recipe
Fig. 03c24 h schedule
04 — Harvest
~28-day cycle
Roughly thirteen cycles a year, cut to the same size and grade every week of the year.
- 1One 28-day cycle
- 2Harvest
- 3Replant, same week
- 4Cumulative output
Fig. 03dAnnual cycles
A field has a season. A plane has a schedule.
Outdoor supply peaks for a few weeks and collapses for the rest of the year. The months below the line are the ones a buyer has to fill from somewhere else, at whatever price the market sets that week.
A field, outdoors
GrowWall™, indoors
Output
A season, then nothing
13 cycles a year, every year
Water
Lost to soil and air
Recirculated — 70–95% less per kilo
Inputs
Pesticides, fertiliser runoff
None. Nutrients dosed and returned
Distance
Trucked or flown to market
Grown inside the city it is sold in
Six things, not ten.
Longer lists dilute. These are the ones a buyer can actually put a number against.
01
Freshness
Cut hours from the customer rather than days. Shelf life starts when the produce leaves your own building.
02
Predictability
A fixed cycle produces the same volume every week of the year, so availability becomes a plan rather than a forecast.
03
Consistency
The same size and grade each harvest, because light, feed and climate are set to a recipe rather than a season.
04
Cost of distance
The one input in fresh produce that never falls. Removing it is the only saving that compounds.
05
Margin
A shorter path from production to customer returns the share currently taken along the way.
06
A brand you own
Private label turns a purchase into an asset. The produce carries your name, not a supplier's.
A system, not a single farm.
01
Urban production
Production sited inside the city that consumes it, in an industrial unit rather than on agricultural land.
02
Wholesale supply
Commercial volume at a uniform grade, on a fixed weekly schedule that a buyer can plan against.
03
Retail & white label
Produce packed under a customer's own brand, with consistent size and quality week to week.
04
Restaurants & hospitality
Smaller local production for kitchens that want freshness and predictable availability.
05
International deployment
Standardised units designed to be shipped, installed and operated by a partner with local market access.
Fig. 03
A plane at working distance
Gothenburg
One continuous surface, worked from a single aisle
Proven in Sweden. Built to deploy anywhere.
Everything on this site comes from one building. Real equipment, real crops, real customers over three and a half years — not a render and not a pilot.
That distinction matters more in this industry than in most. A great deal of capital has gone into indoor farms that grew crops beautifully and never closed a sale at a price that worked.
See the evidenceFrom one farm to farming infrastructure.
The system was standardised from the outset so that growth is a deployment schedule rather than a series of one-off construction projects. That is the difference between a farm and an infrastructure business.
Technology
The Vertechly GrowWall™
A hydroponic growing plane set at roughly 90°, engineered so every plant on it receives the same light, airflow and nutrient feed — and so the whole assembly can be shipped, installed and operated by someone other than its designers.
The four decisions behind it
| Plane height | Built up to 6 metres |
| Plane angle | Approximately 90° — true vertical |
| Growing faces | Two, both worked from a single aisle |
| Method | Recirculating hydroponic, soil-free |
| Lighting | LED, front-lit across the open face |
| Control | Algorithmic light, nutrient and climate recipes per crop |
| Density | ~3× plants per m² of a horizontal system |
| Cycle | ~28 days for lettuce, year-round |
| Inputs excluded | Pesticides, soil, sand |
A six-metre plane carries roughly twelve square metres of growing surface over each square metre of floor, counting both faces.
Rotate the growing plane and the physics change.
Light
Each tier needs its own array overhead, and the tray above shades the one below.
Crosses an open face horizontally. No plant sits under another.
Airflow
Ducted through a series of confined shelves.
Moves freely across the whole canopy, which is how humidity stays manageable.
Structure
Headroom, access and load multiplied by the number of tiers.
A clear-span room and a level slab carry a plane built up to six metres.
Access
Every tier reached separately, from both sides.
One continuous face, worked in a single pass along one aisle.
Fig. 04
A plane in production
Gulf pilot
Light crosses the face; nothing sits under anything else
One position on a plane.
Every plane is the same part repeated. A vertical column, a branch socket every 240 mm, a net cup, and a head growing out of it into open air.
Fig. 05
GrowWall™ · 6 m columns · drag to rotate, scroll to zoom
1 : 10
Modelled from the Gothenburg build
02
Branch
45° socket, alternating faces, 240 mm pitch
03
Cup
Net pot, crop grows outward into open air
04
Feed
Gravity down the column, returned at the foot
Light, water and air, held to a recipe.
Light
LED bars run down both sides of each plane, lighting the face rather than dropping light into a slot. Spectrum and photoperiod follow a per-crop recipe, with automated dimming scheduled against live energy prices so the heaviest draw lands in the cheapest hours. Lighting is 65–85% of a farm's energy, so this is where the margin lives.
Water
Nutrient-dosed water recirculates on a closed loop. Electrical conductivity tells you how concentrated the solution is; pH decides whether the plant can absorb what is dissolved in it. Both are measured continuously and corrected automatically. Water the crop does not take up returns to the system rather than draining away.
Air
An open growing face means airflow crosses the whole canopy instead of being pushed through ducted shelves. That matters because transpiration and humidity are what pathogens need, and because a confined shelf is where circulation fails first.
Fig. 05
Crop range
Herbs and leafy greens, same plane
Recipes set per crop
Lighting is the number that matters.
In any indoor farm, lighting is the largest single draw and everything else — cooling, dehumidification, pumps — follows behind it. It is the line that decides whether the farm is a business.
The growing geometry helps before any equipment does. An open, front-lit face puts light onto the crop rather than into the gap between one tray and the one above it.
Beyond that the levers are unglamorous and effective: efficient LED spectra matched to the crop, automated dimming, and lighting schedules that track live electricity prices so the heaviest draw lands in the cheapest hours of the day.
01
Front-lit open face
Light reaches the canopy directly instead of being absorbed by racking and shelf gaps.
02
Per-crop spectra
Spectrum and photoperiod matched to what the crop actually uses, rather than a single fixed setting.
03
Automated dimming
Output modulated through the cycle rather than run flat out from seed to harvest.
04
Price-tracked scheduling
Lighting hours shifted toward the cheapest electricity available on the day.
Fig. 06
Gulf pilot
The room, floor to ceiling
LED on both faces of every plane
What the power actually runs
The LED bars running down both faces of every plane are the largest single draw in the building. Everything else — cooling, dehumidification, pumps — follows behind them, which is why lighting strategy decides the energy bill rather than tariff shopping.
The orange main along the floor is the distribution line feeding every plane from the same loop, with a take-off at each one. Because it is a single circuit rather than a manifold per tier, there is one pump duty to size and one set of readings to hold.
Air is moved along the aisle rather than ducted through enclosed shelves. An open face needs far less pressure to keep humidity off the canopy, and that difference shows up in the fan load.
Automated where it pays. Manual everywhere else.
It adds real value in repetitive, labour-intensive tasks where the return on investment is clear — seeding, monitoring, or harvest workflows.
VertechlyAutomation is added where the return is measurable and left out where it is not. Conveyors and gantries look decisive on a facility tour, but they have to be financed, powered, maintained and eventually rebuilt, and that cost lands on every head of lettuce that leaves the building.
The geometry helps: a continuous open face is worked in one pass along one aisle, so the labour problem a gantry exists to solve is smaller to begin with.
The control loop, in the room
Each group of planes has its own dosing station — a controller, a flow and level board, and the A and B nutrient stock standing beside it. Nothing about it is exotic, and that is the point: it can be serviced with parts and skills available locally.
Electrical conductivity tells you how concentrated the solution is. pH decides whether the plant can absorb what is dissolved in it. Both are measured continuously and corrected automatically, because getting either wrong shows up in the crop a week later, long after the cause has passed.
The whiteboard hanging on each unit is not a gap in the system. It is a second, human check on the two numbers that matter most — written down, dated, and visible to anyone walking the aisle.
Fig. 07
Gulf pilot
Dosing, pH and EC control
Corrected automatically, checked by eye
Automated
Seeding
High-repetition, high-volume, tightly specified. Clear payback, low failure cost.
Automated
Dosing & monitoring
Climate, EC and pH measured continuously and corrected automatically, on per-crop recipes.
Automated
Light scheduling
Dimming driven by live energy price signals rather than a fixed timetable.
In development
AI disease detection
A camera system to spot powdery mildew before it is visible to someone walking the aisle.
Why Vertechly
We ran the farm ourselves first.
Vertechly designed the system, built it, and then spent three and a half years operating it as a commercial producer. Everything offered here was shaped by that, rather than by a specification written in advance.
A growing system is the easy part. What decides whether a farm works is the crop programmes, the operating protocols and the people who have already made the mistakes — and none of that can be bought in.
In short
Seven things worth knowing.
01
True vertical architecture
Plants grow out of an upright plane rather than off stacked trays. No plant sits under another, so there is no shaded lower tier and no yield gradient down a rack — and the structure is bought once rather than per floor.
02
Proprietary system
The GrowWall™ growing system, the crop algorithms and the control stack are owned, not licensed. That is strategic independence over the product roadmap rather than a dependency on someone else's.
03
Commercial production
Three and a half years of production in Gothenburg, sold through wholesale, restaurants and white label. Crop recipes and operating protocols developed against buyers who could reject them.
04
Modular deployment
A standardised, ready-to-deploy unit rather than a facility rebuilt from scratch at every site. Expansion becomes a deployment schedule instead of a sequence of first-of-a-kind projects.
05
Controlled environment
A sealed room removes or structurally reduces most of the exposures a field grower can only manage — climate, pests, weeds, seasonality, water dependence.
06
Multiple revenue layers
Produce sales, system supply, and recurring agronomy and support — added without redesigning the platform, so the business is not dependent on a single line.
07
Deployability
The system is designed to be shipped, installed and handed over. That means we can build a farm with you rather than only building farms for ourselves.
Fig. 08
Crop at the point of harvest
Gulf pilot
No pesticides, no soil, no sand
The things worth saying plainly.
01
Energy is the deciding number
Lighting is the largest single cost in any indoor farm. Ours runs on per-crop recipes with automated dimming scheduled against live electricity prices, and the open growing face puts light onto the crop rather than into the gaps between trays. Any feasibility model should start here.
02
Height is a choice, not a default
A plane at 2.4–3 m is worked entirely from floor level. Taller configurations trade that for density and need a low-level platform. We specify height against your labour cost, ceiling height and floor-area price rather than applying one answer everywhere.
03
We price against ordinary lettuce
Not against a premium shelf. If a system only works when the customer pays extra, it is a system with a problem. The design target is a production cost that competes with what is already on the shelf.
04
We will tell you if it does not work
Some sites, tariffs and markets do not support a viable farm. We would rather say that in the first conversation than eight weeks into a feasibility study.
Fig. 09
The farm, being worked
Gulf pilot
One aisle, one pass — the whole plane reached from a single side
Proof
Three and a half years in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Everything on this site rests on one 2,000 m² building in Gothenburg where the system grew and sold lettuce for three and a half years. That is the reason this can be a conversation about unit economics rather than projections.
Fig. 10
The hall, in production
Gothenburg · 2,000 m²
Planes repeated down the length of the room
Fig. 11
Between two planes
Gothenburg · 2,000 m²
Worked from a single aisle
Twenty-eight days. Then again.
A field lettuce takes a season and depends on the weather. This takes about four weeks and depends on a recipe. Light hours, spectrum, nutrient concentration, temperature and humidity are set per crop and held constant, which is why the head that leaves on week twelve matches the one that left on week one.
That repeatability is the product. A buyer is not really purchasing lettuce — they are purchasing the certainty that the same size, grade and quantity arrives every week regardless of what the weather did.
It also makes capacity planning arithmetic rather than forecasting: thirteen cycles a year, a known yield per plane, a known number of planes.
- 1One position on a plane
- 2Canopy, grown outward
- 3Root mass in the channel
- 4Light, both faces
Day of cycle
00
Fresh weight
0 g
True leaves
0
Root depth
0 cm
Nutrient EC
1.1 mS
Photoperiod
0 h
Stage Sowing — light, nutrient concentration and climate are held to a per-crop recipe, so every cycle repeats the last one.
Three and a half years of things you cannot learn in a pilot.
Crop performance
Recipes tuned against real buyers and real rejection rates, not trial yields. 200% more biomass in a verified trial with a major European herb grower.
Energy
Automated dimming and price-tracked lighting schedules, because lighting is the line that decides whether a farm works.
Labour
Automate seeding, dosing and monitoring. Keep the rest simple enough that a trained local team can run it.
Planning
Thirteen cycles a year at a known yield per plane makes capacity arithmetic rather than forecasting.
Supporting documentation for the production and trial figures is available on request.
Contact
Let's see if the arithmetic works.
Tell us about the market you are in and what you are trying to supply. We will come back with an honest read on whether a deployment makes sense there — including if it does not.
Direct
hello@vertechly.com
Production
Gothenburg, Västra Götaland, Sweden
Common questions.
A Gothenburg company that designs and builds indoor hydroponic farms in which crops grow out of upright vertical planes. It has operated as both a technology developer and a commercial producer, selling lettuce and leafy greens into Swedish wholesale, restaurants and white-label channels.
Most farms described as vertical are horizontal farms stacked on top of one another — flat trays in racking, with the growing plane still parallel to the floor. True vertical rotates the growing surface itself to roughly 90°, so plants grow out of a continuous upright plane into open air. No plant sits under another, which removes the shading gradient that penalises the lower tiers of a stacked rack.
Lettuce, leafy greens and herbs. The Gothenburg facility produced lettuce at commercial volume, and a comparative biomass trial was run with a major European herb grower.
Yes — recirculating hydroponics on a closed loop. Nutrient-dosed water circulates through the planes, with electrical conductivity and pH measured continuously and corrected automatically. No soil, no sand, no pesticides.
It depends on target output and ceiling height, because growing area is a function of plane height as much as floor area. A 2.4–3 m plane gives roughly 5–6 m² of growing surface per m² of floor; a 6 m plane gives roughly 12 m². The Gothenburg facility is 2,000 m².
Only at height. Planes in the 2.4–3 m range are worked entirely from floor level with no equipment. Taller configurations trade that for density and are worked with a low-level mobile platform along the same single aisle. Height is specified per site against local labour cost, ceiling height and floor-area price.
Yes. Roughly thirteen crop cycles a year, independent of season or weather, because temperature, humidity, light and nutrients are all set rather than inherited.
Selectively. Seeding, nutrient dosing, pH and EC control, monitoring and light scheduling are automated because the return is clear. Beyond that the system is deliberately kept simple enough to service with locally available skills, so a trained local team can run the farm rather than depending on the people who built it.
Both. The system is packaged as a standardised, ready-to-deploy unit with a defined footprint, power and water specification, crop programme and commissioning process. A partner can take a complete farm, or the technology and support to run one.
Lighting is the largest single draw in any indoor farm, so it is the first thing a feasibility model should look at. Our levers are the front-lit open face, efficient LED spectra matched to the crop, automated dimming, and lighting schedules that track live electricity prices. We model this properly for your site rather than quoting an industry average.
The assessment and feasibility stage runs roughly eight weeks. Build and commissioning depend on site condition, power availability and configuration, and are quoted against the specific project rather than a standard figure.
Use the form above or email hello@vertechly.com. The more you can say about market, site and target output, the more useful the first conversation will be.