Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri, UAE Minister of State for Food and Water Security, visited the VeggiTech farms in Al Zubair, Sharjah. The minister was received by Ravi Shrotriya, CEO; Hemant Julka, COO; and Prakash Vallabh, Partner of VeggiTech.
VIP dignitaries in attendance were the Young-wook Chun, Consul General of the Republic of Korea, and Kwan Seok Lee, Head of Korean Trade - Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA). Marwan bin Jassim Al Sarkal, Executive Chairman, Shurooq, and Ahmed Alqaseer, COO of Shurooq, Mohammed Al Musharrakh,CEO of Invest in Sharjah, were also present on the day.
The visit was a significant milestone in VeggiTech’s journey of bringing technology to the agricultural space in the UAE to create sustainable and environmentally friendly farms.
The delegation was taken on a tour of the farm focusing on the grow light assisted hydroponic and protected hydroponic facilities. Ravi Shrotriya highlighted the design and efficacy of the grow lights manufactured in the VeggiTech research, design and development center in Seoul, Korea. The same have been used in the indoor vertical farms in Sharjah, UAE.
Bhaskar Rao, Chief Agronomy Officer, VeggiTech, spoke about the competency of the company's agronomy team that uses multiple grow techniques to provide pesticide free produce; including the overall harvest plan of over 2.2million kgs of produce between August 2020 and July 2021. The KPI driven approach to measure water, power and nutrition per kg per sqm was also presented during this session.
Mariam Bint Mohammed Almheiri said, “I was delighted to visit VeggieTech, an ag-tech company in Sharjah with the sole aim of disrupting the agriculture sector. During my visit to the farm I learned about the different technologies that they are using to enhance production efficiencies of many varieties of vegetables, aiming to use less water and power. We also learned more about their training programmes to nurture the next agri-technologists.”
