The greenhouse industry is changing quickly, and one of the best ways to keep up is to spend a day with the people working in it. On 7 October we went to the Canadian Greenhouse Conference at the Niagara Falls Convention Centre and walked the trade floor with our clients.
We went to see more than individual products. A greenhouse brings together climate control, automation, irrigation, lighting, energy, metering and the decisions people make with all of it every day. Each system has a job, and the real value often comes from how well they work together.
Listening on the trade floor
Walking the floor with our clients gave us a practical view of what growers are asking for. We saw the systems already in use, heard where operators are running into trouble and talked with growers and service providers about where better measurement could help.
Over the past year we have signed another greenhouse project, so this is a sector we are investing in. Our work is meant to sit alongside the greenhouse automation and climate systems growers already rely on, from companies such as Priva, Hoogendoorn, Ridder and Hortimax. Our part is the extra visibility: water and energy use, equipment performance and the conditions around it, brought into one centralized dashboard.
The conference also showed how much interoperability matters. Greenhouse teams run complex facilities with many connected systems, and reliable metering helps turn what those systems produce into a clear picture of what is happening on site.
We left Niagara Falls better informed and keen to keep going. If you run a greenhouse or supply technology to the sector, our team would be glad to talk about how metering and monitoring could add to the systems you already have.