Less than two years after it opened, San Francisco-based vertical farm Plenty Ag is closing its Compton, California facility. The company said in a LinkedIn post it is undergoing a strategic shift to strawberries and also cited the rising cost of doing business in California, including climbing energy costs, made operating there challenging.
Plenty has partnered with Watsonville, California-based Driscoll’s. The company has recently opened a 40,000-square-foot Richmond, Virginia-based facility that is expected to produce up to 4 million pounds of strawberries annually.
The company said that Plenty’s future isn’t growing strawberries because they fill the supply gap, provide a locally grown product with peak season flavor year-round, and command a premium price. They said while most vertical farms are limited to lettuces, Plenty has spent the last decade designing a modular growing system flexible enough to support a wide variety of crops.
Plenty’s Compton farm was backed by a $400 million investment from Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart Inc., which included an agreement for Plenty to supply leafy greens to Walmart stores in California.
I’m Lorrie Boyer reporting for AgNet West.