One of the most famous Italian startups is burning down in Cavenago Brianza. Planet Farms. The most awarded hydroponic farming startup. The largest vertical cultivation company in Europe. The images currently being broadcast by online information sites show the Lombardy plant completely engulfed in flames. Inside the facility were tools and technologies from a company celebrated as the most automated vertical farming company in the world.
Born on the outskirts of Milan, it was founded in 2018. It raised 40 million euros in investments from Italian venture capital and was in the full scaleup phase: the business model has proven to work over the years and its founder, Luca Travaglini, 44 years, has decided to aim for expansion into other areas of Italy.
What Planet Farms, the best-known Italian vertical farming startup, does
Planet Farms deals with vertical farming. Translated, he has developed a vertical cultivation system that allows you to save 95% of water and 90% of soil. It produces crops completely independent of climatic conditions. Fruits and vegetables are available 365 days a year. With an almost total recovery of the water used and without the need for pesticides, as these are crops grown in a protected environment.
In the Planet Farms production centers, a finished and packaged product is directly produced from a seed. Without anyone ever touching him. All automated. Without external interventions. Salad and pesto are distributed in over 500 Italian supermarkets.
Planet Farmss and other hydroponic farming solutions cannot currently replace traditional agricultural production. “It’s a bit like formula one for the automotive industry,” Travaglini told Italian Tech last year. But many technologies that were born as a niche then, due to market needs or necessities, became widely consumed.
Who is Luca Travaglini, the founder of the company. The causes of the fire are unknown
Son of a family of industrialists active in the agri-food sector for over 50 years (Travaglini is the company that produces machinery for drying cured meats almost everywhere in the world), he sees solutions like the one offered by Planet Farmss as an answer to an urgent problem: rethinking agricultural production, making it more sustainable, putting an end to a past of excessive consumption of land for cultivation that has been going on for millennia.
It took years of research and development to develop the technology that made Planet Farms’ vertical cultivation possible. A difficult challenge, initially considered true madness, which then became a business. In 2021 Planet Farms won the Italian Tech Award, made by Italian Tech and the 2031 association.
At the moment, neither the cause nor the extent of the damage from the fire that is currently destroying the Cavenago Brianza plant is clear.