N.THING, a Seoul-based agri-food tech company presented their new hybrid vertical farming solution and newest crop recipes for the global market at CES 2022 in Las Vegas. During the show, fruitful business deals and negotiations were undertaken with high profile buyers and investors, being interested in further conversation and meetings after the event.
N.THING CUBE, a container-built vertical farm engineered to reduce using earth resources, enhances the production of clean and safe yields that are free from pollution and pesticides and cultivated in a sustainable environment. By saving energy, and creating a sustainable ecosystem, CUBE is elaborating a decentralized farming solution that can be set up in any city without relying on imports and logistics for easy access to a traceable food supply.
“So far, agricultural products have been produced in centralized protocols and due to its dependency on location and climate, it is managed in a centralized and grower-driven manner,” says Leo Kim, CEO & founder of N.THING Inc.
The CUBE is fully managed by IoT, cloud computing, and stability data mining, and the OS and dashboard allows customers to grow crops professionally regardless of their agricultural experience. Overall, the OS governs the farm, and provides customers with full access to monitor in real-time. Relying on this software, N.THING also unveils their newest variety of crop ‘hemp’ at CES. As one of its solutions, hemp business can be secured more dependency and productivity relatively free from human elements and climate variations. By this distinctive strength, major deals have been offered on site to run PoC in the US and European market with leading players in this industry.
Currently, N.THING holds various partners from online, offline, and commerce players in Korea. N.THING generates revenues by selling crops, farms and solutions.The Korean partnerships include Emart, a leading retailer in Korea, and value chain partnerships, a major logistics center of the Emart covering Seoul and Kyungi area in South Korea, and is directly distributed to the Seoul and Kyungi branches, reducing footprint and food miles.
“More and more consumers globally are noticing why the locally produced vegetables are necessary. Our crops, which are distributed in the cold-chain system, are taking a few hours after harvest, as compared to days or weeks for average products.”
The CUBE operating system aims to produce crops of the highest quality. Provided that the farm has been managed sustainably, the OS provides farm owners with an ability to cultivate quality crops, retrieve an estimate on the overall productivity and forecasted profits. The OS provides users with full control over the growing process, and is designed to add smart solutions that will impact the growth stages, unlike what is available with traditional farming.
“I look at vertical farming as the way forward of an opportunity to show how software can feed the world sustainably.” Leo explained. “Ultimately, the end-goal is to achieve a consumer-driven market that means the food and crops can be produced what the consumers need on the time they need. And our operating system is designed to effectively achieve this.”
N.THING’s key concept, called FaaP, Farm as a Product, had won the Best of Innovation award at CES 2020, and received an honouree award at CES 2022 Innovation Awards for Sustainability, Eco-design and Smart energy. And now they are ready to open series C fundraising globally in 2022.
