The first phase of a recently built indoor medical cannabis farm in North Macedonia is just about to begin its first growing cycle. The entire facility of Lajting Luks has been adapted to the GACP requirements in order to provide pharmaceutical raw materials of consistently high quality. When it comes to lighting, the company has partnered with Plantalux.
The partnership
“The motto of our activity from the very beginning is ‘we do more.’ It was no different in the case of the North Macedonian indoor farm,” says Jakub Lachowski, Co-Founder, and CEO of Plantalux. In addition to the XX960W Full Spectrum LED lighting, Plantalux also supplied switchboards and a lighting control system. The relationship between the two companies does not end there. “Plantalux representatives have already visited the farm twice to make sure that the installation of the delivered products was successful and to share their experience of growing cannabis in a controlled environment.”
Jakub explains that the chosen control system allows for the imitation of sunrise and sunset to reduce the stress caused by the sudden switching on and off of the lighting. All while maintaining the appropriate photoperiod for a given growth phase. “Another aspect was advising on the selection of genetics along with the methodology of cultivation or providing a network of contacts to Plantalux partners so as to take full advantage of the possibilities of the indoor farm.”
New line of efficient lights
ROI, CapEx, OpEx, and many more factors have to be taken into account when working on a project. “Today, looking for savings and decreasing costs in budgets while maintaining stable quality are key points in every business, also in CEA. One of the biggest factors currently is energy prices,” adds Jakub.
Yet such situations push manufacturers to provide even more efficient products to support their clients. “At Plantalux, we don’t have a direct impact on electricity prices, but we can definitely help indirectly – by providing horticulture LED lamps of higher efficiency. As a result, less power is needed to provide the same light intensity on the canopy level.”
Accordingly, Plantalux has announced their new line of top lighting, with a system efficiency of 3,0 mmol/J in case of broad spectrum and narrow of 3,5 mmol/J. “What has not changed in our lamps is dimming – this has always been a standard for us to enable users to play with power manually or by control system communicating via PWM or 0-10V.”
The lamps were already presented to the first potential clients during last’s week trip to Greece. At the same time, the new series of lamps in both versions – broad and narrow spectrum, are installed at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland. This is the second year of cooperation between Plantalux and the university. “We see a lot of mutually beneficial fields of working together and eventually providing better products for greenhouses and indoor farms. Because of that, we have always been flexible with the spectrum and power of lamps, depending on the application and needs of the project or research we conduct together.”
For more information:
Plantalux
www.plantalux.pl