Stage two of d’VineRipe’s A$65m high-tech tomato glasshouse in South Australia was officially opened on Tuesday.
The 17ha facility is a joint venture between fresh food marketing company, Perfection Fresh Australia, and diverse investment company, The Victor Smorgon Group, and has the capacity to produce up to 10,000 tonnes of truss and specialty tomatoes a year.
According to a media release the glasshouse used the latest technology to intensify and expand food production in an environmentally sustainable way.
Perfection Fresh Australia’s chief executive officer Michael Simonetta said the glasshouse’s expanded capacity better placed d’VineRipe to provide consistent year-round supply, minimise peaks and troughs and respond faster to shortfalls.
Perfection Fresh and its retail partners continued to collaborate by researching and developing new, better tasting varieties, he added.
Dutch glasshouse construction company, van der Hoeven greenhousebuilders, designed and built both glasshouse stages. Stage one opened in 2007.
The facility uses leading-edge technologies and operating systems including a co-generation plant which runs on natural gas to control the glasshouse climate, water sourced from Adelaide’s waste water supply, a closed watering system, and innovative packing lines. Generating renewable energies such as biogas to compost its own waste and an on-site nursery to propagate seeds was on d’VineRipe’s future agenda, stated the media release.
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