Creo Technology

A best thing one can experience in rural Japan is farmers’ markets. From Hokkaido corn and Rijk Zwaan lettuce to Yamagata cherries, Ehime mandarin oranges, and Okinawan limes, farmers are putting their best foot forward to grow and market the produce of their homeland. However, with the current variation in weather patterns, many Japanese farmers are feeling the heat of low yields and even crop damage. This magnifies the already growing demand for more robust artificial light plant factories that can meet the needs of the market.

Enter Creo Technology.

Creo Technology is a research and development startup that spearheads innovation excellence in taking the agricultural sector forward with artificial light, air conditioning, and hydrolight cultivation. With over eight years of continuous R&D, it has developed an in-door plant factory with the potential to make a difference in the agricultural industry. It helps achieve top-notch yield quality while reducing initial costs by 30 percent, number of personnel required by 50 percent through automation, and utility costs by 40 percent.

Creo Technology’s unrivalled technical acumen and its collaboration with large enterprises has made the construction of this revolutionary plant factory a reality, implementing the results of its R&D on a large scale.

Complementing the technological innovation is Creo Technology’s AN™ hydroponics system that helps the cultivation of large, high-quality and affordable lettuce. 600000 tons of lettuce is grown annually in Japan, and over a half of them goes for processing ready-to-eat salad and sandwich. But, the demand for processed lettuce continues to increase. Consequently, a stable supply volume, quality, and price of lettuce are essential, but conventional indoor plant factories are not able to meet the needs. Large and high-quality AN lettuce is best for the processing needs. Users can produce over one ton of various types of lettuce per day, with a commercial production capacity of more than 300 grams per head. AN™ is instrumental in growing crops stably throughout the year, delivering excellent quality lettuce to all, in cold regions, the tropics, or even the desert.

“AN™ harvested lettuce is clean and has long shelf life. Even after 10 days, it has less than 300 cfu/g as opposed to open field lettuce with bacterial count over 10E3 cfu/g and other plant factory lettuce, with 1.6*103 to 1.5*104 cfu/g,” says Yasumasa Miyake, CEO of Creo Technology.

The unique combination of Creo Technology’s in-door plant factory and AN™ hydroponics system is the answer for the persistent challenges faced by conventional artificial light plant factories. Increasing cultivation costs—both initial and operation cost—have limited the productivity of plants in the past, even when they were scaled up. The company has eliminated this bottleneck with its optimal cultivation process for growing lettuce from scratch.

Creo Technology innovated the internal mechanism of conventional artificial light plant factory, and saves on labor by using LEDs more efficiently. Its systems’ features are based on not only using LED efficiently but also simple, smart automation machine and realizing ideal growing environment in the system. The company has also come up with a plant that can stably grow large lettuce at low cost. In one instance, Creo Technology collaborated with a client that has already selected a plant. They conducted a profitability simulation of commercial production based on the cultivation results of the plant in question and identified that they could not expect continuous stable sales with the conventional quality.

The client then approached Creo Technology, revamped their plan, and decided to make a large-scale investment using AN™. In fact, the local government recommended them to AN™. In the process of making the investment decision, a detailed technical evaluation was conducted by an expert examiner appointed by the local government and AN™ was adopted.

After eight years of continuous R&D and a series of pilot in commercial plant development, Creo Technology has finally built a botanical marvel that is now commercially available. The company executes plant sales with Mitsubishi Chemical Aqua Solutions—a member of the Mitsubishi Chemical Group—to take its innovation to the masses.