The spare desert outside Port Augusta, three hours from Adelaide, is not the kind of scenery you find in Australian traveler pamphlets. The backdrop to an area of coal-fired power stations, lead purifying and mining, the seaside scene is spiked with saltbush that can live on a stream of saline seawater leaking up through the dry soil.
Exclusive Sundrop Farms has secured an exceptional 10-year contract to supply Coles supermarkets with truss tomatoes from right on time one year from now, in the wake of getting more than $100 million in development financing from worldwide private equity giant KKR.
Sundrop Farms, which began with four employees, pulled in Coles and KKR with its inventive utilization of existing innovation following a four-year pilot venture.
Using sunlight and seawater, the company develops high-esteem produce like tomatoes and capsicums year-round, utilizing sunlight based energy to warmth and cools the greenhouses and desalinate the water supply.
The applications to other parched regions of the world like the Middle East or drought-ravaged California appear a conspicuous and endless opportunity.
Farming presently utilizes around 70 percent of the world's fresh water supplies and interest for new food is required to increment by 50 percent by 2050 because of population development. Present farming techniques, which are water and energy intensive, are not reasonable indefinitely.
While Chinese interests are caught up with attempting to purchase up quality farm land and being forbidden by the Foreign Investment Review Board, Sundrop is building a 20-hectare greenhouse north of Port Augusta that is transforming saltbush-secured desert into a gainful farming operation.
Sundrop managing director John Phinney stated that this week, the first laborers started fitting out the monstrous hydroponic greenhouse in readiness to begin planting in March. At the point when the office achieves full production, it will create 17,000 tons of truss tomatoes every year, or somewhere around 10 and 20 percent of Australia's total market.
The remote area is a few hundred kilometers from the nearest agricultural area, so it has advantages in being free of pests or infections from nearby farms. It takes ocean water from the Spencer Gulf.
Coles was pulled in by the possibility of a consistent supply of tomatoes at a settled value, taking after quite a while of 'once-in-a-century' dry seasons and surges, which sent the cost of food and vegetables soaring.
Sundrop hopes to begin delivering its first tomatoes to Coles in the first half of 2016.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
