March 2011 – The Transcontinental
Ten-fold growth for greenhouse
Management at the sustainable greenhouse near Winninowie has announced a major expansion in the next year and new name for the project, “Sundrop Farms”.
Managing Director and cofounder of Seawater Greenhouse Australia Philipp Saumweber announced exclusively to The Transcontinental the project would be made 10 times bigger in the next 10-months.
Mr Saumweber said Sundrop Farms hopes to be “a leader in sustainable desert horticulture”.
Staff at the greenhouse aim to do this by significantly expanding the scale of their operation.
“In the next 10 months or so we’re looking at going from the size we are currently and ‘timesing’ it by 10,” he said.
Head grower at Sundrop Farms, David Pratt, said the greenhouse is only in experimental stages at the moment.
“We’ve taken what we’ve learned from the pilot program and we’re getting to use it to make a more productive greenhouse,” Mr Pratt said.
However the start of the expansion has been delayed, with issues with the initial construction of the greenhouse needing to be fixed.
Mr Saumweber said some of the components installed by subcontractors into the roof were not of the specified quality.
