Saudi’s PIF partners with AeroFarms to build indoor vertical farms across MENA

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has signed a joint venture agreement with AeroFarms, a US-based sustainable agriculture company.

The two entities will establish a company in Riyadh to build and operate indoor vertical farms in Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East and North Africa region.

The partnership with AeroFarms aligns with the #PIFstrategy 2021-2025, which focuses on developing and enabling the capabilities of key sectors, including food and agriculture, localizing technologies and developing industries to benefit the private sector. pic.twitter.com/SCntIB4Ous

— Public Investment Fund (@PIF_en) February 1, 2023

The first farm in Saudi Arabia, which is expected to be the largest indoor vertical farm in the MENA region, will have an annual production capacity of up to 1.1 million kgs of agricultural crops.

“The agreement with AeroFarms will lead to the establishment of indoor vertical farms in Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region, increasing regional reliance on locally produced, high-quality crops grown in a sustainable way using the latest technologies,” said Majed AlAssaf, head of consumer goods and retail, MENA investments division at PIF.

The partnership is expected to enable sustainable, local sourcing of crops all year round, grown using AeroFarms’ proprietary smart agriculture technology platform. It will optimise the utilisation of natural resources, including water and agricultural lands, with no need for arable land.

“Our mission is to grow the best plants possible for the betterment of humanity, and we created AeroFarms to help solve the greatest agriculture challenges and increase food resiliency around the world,” added David Rosenberg, co-founder and CEO of AeroFarms.

The initiative will result in higher yields and using up to 95 per cent less water versus traditional field farming,” the statement said.

By virtue of the agreement, “several farms across the region in the next few years” are to be built and operated. The partnership also aligns with PIF’s strategy, which focuses on developing and enabling the capabilities of key sectors, including food and agriculture.

In recent news, Saudi’s National Agricultural Development Company (Nadec) entered a strategic partnership with UAE-based agritech firm Pure Harvest Smart Farms on a large-scale food project, which aims to deliver over 27 hectares of production in the near-term.

Read: Pure Harvest enters strategic partnership with Saudi’s Nadec