Nanochemistry Innovator Debuts GrowBlade™ Flat-Panel Growlights at NYC AgTech Week
CONTENT SOURCED FROM BUSINESSWIRE
The company behind one of the newest LED’s on the market - Light Polymers - is Agritecture’s featured sponsor for the third annual NYC AgTech Week. To view their Crystallin lights up close, come by our office at 40 Bushwick Ave, Brooklyn anytime during the week (Sep 16 - Sep 21), and be sure to purchase tickets to any events you’d like to attend.
What follows is a press release from Light Polymers:
Light Polymers, a nanochemistry startup with R&D operations in Silicon Valley, Taiwan and Korea, is debuting their GrowBlade™ flat-panel horticulture lighting at the third annual NYC AgTech Week.
Hosted by the NYC Agriculture Technology Collective, NYC AgTech Week 2017 includes tours, workshops and presentations that engage attendees on the bleeding edge of urban agriculture knowledge and development. AgTech Week 2017 kicks off on September 16thfollowed by 6 days of events across the city. Light Polymers is also September’s featured sponsor for Agritecture, a leading urban agriculture blog and a founding member of the collective.
Light Polymers’ GrowBlade™ flat-panel grow lights are part of a new generation of LED lights that improve the productivity of multi-layer indoor cultivation for leafy greens and herbs, seedlings, clones, grafts and tissue culture. GrowBlade™ flat panels are made possible by our proprietary Crystallin®lyotropic coating and suspension chemistry which is water-based, lowering manufacturing costs.
“Our self-aligning coatings can be applied with high yield and low cost. The coating packs phosphor particles in a dense layer maximizing light conversion, allowing us to lower both production and operating costs. The result is GrowBlade™ light panels that are cheaper, thinner and more efficient than conventional grow lights. These advancements mean lower initial costs, lower operating costs and improved productivity for indoor farms,” said Sandor Schoichet (image above), VP of Grow Products at Light Polymers.
About Light Polymers
Light Polymers is a nanochemistry company with deep domain knowledge of lyotropic liquid crystals, which have use in many applications including LCD and OLED flat panel displays, LED lighting, building materials and biomedical applications. Founded in 2013 in San Francisco, Light Polymers’ water-based coating and suspension chemistry is game-changing for a number of industries. For more information, visit http://www.lightpolymers.com/
About NYC AgTech Week 2017:
The Third Annual NYC AgTech Week will showcase the efforts of entrepreneurs, farmers and technologists who are advancing urban agriculture in New York City and beyond. The week commences with a brunch kick-off at Agritecture’s office at 40 Bushwick Ave and continues from September 16-21 at locations around the city. AgTech Week will feature farm tours, workshops, demos, networking and the ever popular Locavore Feast. Shown here is a recap video from the 2016 edition of NYC AgTech Week.
(Image: AgTech Week 2016 participants on an NYC farm tour)
Contacts
Write2Market for Light Polymers
Casey Stokes, 404-428-2135
[email protected]
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SEPTEMBER SPOTLIGHT: LIGHT POLYMERS’ GROWBLADE™ FLAT PANEL LIGHTS FOR VERTICAL FARMING
Light Polymers is the newest horticultural LED grow light maker on the market, but at Agritecture we’ve been tracking their innovation since we first met nearly one year ago at a LARTA Institute event in Los Angeles.
After closing a multi-million dollar strategic funding deal, Light Polymers is now announcing its first GrowBlade™ flat-panel LED grow lights, designed for vertical farming and other controlled environment applications. We’re excited to introduce them as Agritecture’s featured Sponsor for September and to highlight their new GrowBlade lights in the +Farm demo at our offices during NYC AgTech Week. We interviewed Sandor Schoichet, VP of Grow Products at Light Polymers, to learn more.
Agritecture: Let’s jump right in. What is your team’s background and how did you come together to develop the GrowBlade system?
Sandor: The Grow Products story started almost two years ago when I met Marc McConnaughey, CEO of Light Polymers. We were both part of the Bay Area Alliance of CEOs, a sort of mutual support organization for business leaders. Marc gave a talk where he demonstrated how their Crystallin® photonic film could down-convert blue LED light into beautiful high-CRI (Color Rendering Index) white light. I had recently read The Vertical Farm by Prof. Dickson Despommier and was thinking about opportunities to build a business related to indoor farming. So I asked Marc if his team could formulate a PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) spectrum film. The challenge caught the interest of Dr. Evgeny Morozov, Lead Materials Scientist at Light Polymers, and shortly thereafter we had a lab bench prototype made from a hand-coated film sample and an empty Altoids mints tin. It was destiny calling and we haven’t looked back since!
First GrowBlade prototype made from an Altoids Mints tin
A: Tell us a bit about Light Polymers’ history.
S: Light Polymers is a nanochemistry company with deep domain knowledge of lyotropic materials, which have a wide range of uses in addition to LED lighting, including LCD and OLED flat panel displays, biomedical assays, and advanced building materials. Light Polymers was started in 2013 in San Francisco and our OLED chemistry is now in trial stages with potential commercialization partners in the display industry. Our Crystallin family of LED downlights was launched in select Asian markets in August. The GrowBlade family of flat-panel grow lights that we’re announcing later this month at NYC AgTech Week will be our first step into the commercial horticulture lighting business.
Sandor Schoichet inspecting the Isabel alpha-test site
A: What do you think an entrepreneur or buyer should look for in horticultural LED lights?
S: Both products and vendor services that help growers achieve their operational and financial goals. At Light Polymers, we’re not focused only on high-quality lighting; we’re developing a family of over-canopy lighting and sensing products designed to integrate with farm management software. Delivering robust and profitable growing systems for indoor vertical farming is a challenge that the industry is still learning to meet. We intend to be part of the solution that lets vertical farming and controlled environment agriculture (CEA) scale into the global food supply sector.
A: How will Light Polymers continue to stay on the cutting edge?
S: There are three different ways we want to push the envelope. First is building a solutions-oriented business culture, delivering high-performance lighting systems. As the industry continues to grow there will be many opportunities for a responsive team to partner with innovative customers. In support of the solutions strategy, our second focus is building real depth in the science of photobiology, in installation design and engineering, and in farm management systems integration. Our third front reflects our team’s experience with virtual production models that leverage the high-volume flat panel lighting and display supply chain. This experience will allow us to be very aggressive on pricing and delivery for our customers.
GrowBlade Edge 1400 panels at Isabel (alpha-test samples)
A: What excites you about vertical farming?
S: I’ve always been interested in the way that technology and society co-evolve. Over the past several years, studying the sustainability of our society and its infrastructure has become a passion. These three themes, technological innovation, social change, and the need for sustainability, are now coming together in a generational wave of change that will impact agriculture and the entire food supply sector. Controlled environment agriculture is a vital part of responding to macro trends like population and economic growth, urbanization, water scarcity, agricultural runoff, climate change, and food security.
As a designer, an engineer, and a developer, helping address a part of this challenge is very exciting. Indoor CEA is just starting to come together as a serious industry sector, and there is huge scope for creative product and service developments. We’ve placed early alpha-test lights with several organizations, including the MIT OpenAg Initiative. The work they’re doing with the open source Food Computer reminds me so much of the early days of distributed computing workstations and homebrew computer clubs, and we know how that scaled beyond all expectation. I’ve worked in a number of different areas over my career, including digital engineering, networking, biotech and business development. Developing our lighting business for vertical farming lets me combine elements of them all.
GrowBlade Edge 1400 panels at Isabel (alpha-test samples)
A: What makes Light Polymers’ GrowBlade product line stand out?
S: Our GrowBlade flat panel grow lights deliver even, wide-area, fully diffused illumination, without hot or cold spots, and will be available in a range of tailored PAR spectra. The whole GrowBlade product family is designed to allow farmers to grow closer, increasing productivity within a given footprint, while improving crop consistency and quality.
What makes our flat panel lights possible is a new generation of remote photonic down-conversion films, based on our proprietary Crystallin® lyotropic coating and suspension chemistry. Remote down-conversion is not a new concept to the LED industry, but implementation and cost issues have kept it from being widely adopted despite its many advantages. Current down-conversion films are made from a silicon resin, using toxic chemistry in a time-consuming, low yield process. They’ve been limited to niche applications where high-quality lighting is required, like museums or photography studios. By contrast, our Crystallin chemistry uses water as a solvent and can be coated on roll-to-roll machines with high yield and low cost. The self-aligning properties of the lyotropic material pack the phosphor particles in a dense layer, maximizing blue light conversion and allowing us to lower both production and operating costs.
Since the output spectrum is generated by the Crystallin film, we can formulate a wide variety of application-specific spectra tailored for leafy greens and herbs, clones, seedlings and grafts, tissue culture, and greenhouse daylight supplementation. In moving crop systems we can tailor spectra for different stages of the lifecycle. We’re also glad to formulate custom spectra on request.
Other stand-out elements of our solution that will be coming along soon include GrowBlade Hub and Sensor modules. GrowBlade Hubs will simplify power wiring for large installations and transform the individual fixtures into a connected IoT (Internet of Things) platform for active light control, environmental sensing, and crop monitoring. Can’t wait until I’m free to talk about that in more depth!
Stop by Agritecture during NYC AgTech Week to meet Sandor and see the lights in person.
A: Why did you choose NYC AgTech Week as the first place to show your products to the world?
S: The awesome combination of the Agritecture network, being part of Blue Planet’s +Farm demonstration and a week-long opportunity to meet and talk with a wide range of growers and innovators across the industry made it the obvious choice.
A: Last question, what makes you happy?
S: Designing and building cool things that work. Contributing to the evolution of a socially meaningful new industry sector. Meeting new friends who are making a positive difference in the world. Oh, and sailing!
GrowBlade Edge 600 at Agritecture’s Brooklyn Office (alpha-test sample)
Winter is here but this recap of #NYCagtechweek 2016 has warmed us to the bone!
We want to once again thank all of the NYC Ag Collective members that made it possible and of course the more than 200 attendees!
Who are the NYC Ag Collective Members who led AgTech Week 2016?
AeroFarms / Farm.One /
Association for Vertical Farming / Edenworks / Feedback Farms / Teens for Food Justice / Sky Vegetables / VertiCulture / Harlem Grown / Blue Planet Consulting / Smallhold / Living Restoration / Agrilyst / Re-Nuble / Hellgate Farm / Manhattan Agriculture / Cloud Farms / urbanstrong
Looking forward, the NYC Ag Collective is planning AgTech Week 2017 but also a special winter AgTech Day in February 2017. Sign me up for updates on NYC Ag Collective events and deals!
The timeless saying if you can make it here you can make it anywhere has captured the essence of New York City since Sinatra first sang those words. In a city with over 8 million people, in a city that can be humid or frigid, in a city where the hustle never stops;
"If you can grow it here, you can grow it anywhere."
Featuring: AeroFarms / Farm.One / Association for Vertical Farming / Edenworks Farmlab and HQ / Feedback Farms / North Brooklyn Farms / Teens for Food Justice / Sky Vegetables / VertiCulture / Oko Farms / Harlem Grown / Blue Planet Consulting / Smallhold / Living Restoration LLC / Hydroponics at CDSC / Lowline Lab / Hunter College / Baldor Specialty Foods / Agrilyst / Green Bronx Machine / Re-Nuble / Hellgate Farm / Tinyfield Roofhop Farm / Honey's / Manhattan Agriculture / Cloud Farms/Grove / AgFunder / Agritecture / Grownex / urbanstrong ... and more.
Sponsors: Nick Burton - State of the Soil Virtual Conference / REED Academy / GrowNex Salad Wall / NYX HEMERA TECHNOLOGIES / Arise Agtech
Media Partners: AgFunder / Foodtank / Our name is Farm / Agritecture.com
Our September Cover Feature: “Salad Wall” by Grownex
Every month we change our agritecture.com cover photo to feature innovative companies in the emerging industries of urban agriculture, hydroponic greenhouses, and vertical farming.
This month’s featured company on our header is Grownex who are featuring their newest product, Salad Wall, at this year’s NYC AgTech Week (September 19-24).
Salad Wall is a low-profile (10″ deep) indoor hydroponic garden for restaurants, offices, and storefronts. The team behind Grownex brings decades of plant factory (Japanese name for vertical farming) expertise to their newest product. Grownex is a new arrival to the US market and is a division of D-Glatt Japan.
You can see Salad Wall in person during NYC AgTech Week at the Tech Demo Day and also throughout the week at Blue Planet Consulting - who will have their offices open to the public the entire week.
Salad Wall by Grownex will be on display at NYC AgTech Week 2016 - 164 Meserole Street (storefront) - 10-4pm every day.
Interested in being featured on the cover of agritecture.com? Email henry(at)agritecture.com
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NYC Ag Collective Launches 2nd Annual NYC Agtech Week!
NYC'S Agtech Scene Opens its Doors to the World to See (and Taste). This September, the NYC Agriculture Collective will host its 2nd Annual "Agtech Week".
The week is filled with farm tours, technology demos, business panels, networking events and a locavore dinner. The week's events are distributed throughout the five boroughs where collective members operate. Participants will have the opportunity to move from Manhattan to the Bronx, Queens to Brooklyn. Get your tickets at https://www.eventbrite.de/e/nyc-agtech-week-2016-registration-26734184666
A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today. As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management. It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products." Learn more about how we can grow more vegetables in and closer to NYC at #NYCagtechweek Nycagtechweek2015.sched.org