Giant vertical farm in Denmark to give yield 15 times a year

A purple glow illuminates stacked boxes where lettuce, herbs, and kale will soon be sprouting at one of Europe's biggest "vertical farms," which has just opened in a warehouse in an industrial zone in Copenhagen.

Fourteen layers of racks soar from floor to ceiling in this massive, 7,000-square-metre hangar used by Danish start-up Nordic Harvest.

The produce grown here will be harvested 15 times a year, despite never seeing soil or daylight. It is lit up around the clock by 20,000 specialized LED lightbulbs.

In this futuristic farm, little robots deliver trays of seeds from aisle to aisle.

The large aluminum boxes are mostly empty for now, but lettuce and other leafy greens will soon be growing.
Some 200 tonnes of produce are due to be harvested in the first quarter of 2021.

Almost 1,000 tonnes annually when the farm is running at full capacity by the end of 2021, explains Anders Riemann, founder and chief executive of Nordic Harvest.

That would make the Taastrup warehouse one of Europe's biggest vertical farms.