Ekonoke Spain

This interview details Ekonoke, an indoor farming company based in Spain. The interview is with Javier Ramiro, Head of Research and Development of Ekonoke.

‍

‍

What is the origin story of Ekonoke?

‍

We are four entrepreneurs from Madrid who met when we were presenting our products at a FoodLab here in the city center, we liked each other and saw that our projects could come together at some point.

‍

Antonio Rojas and I, Javier Ramiro, are both analytical chemists and had always worked in pharmaceutical and research laboratories. In 2017 we created an indoor microgreens and edible flowers (CEA) company called Los Tallos Microgreens.

‍

Ana Sáez and Inés Sagrario, agricultural engineer and economist respectively, founded their company in 2016, called Achipámpanos. They grew babyleaf, aromatic, and leaf crops in greenhouses in zip grow towers.

Due to rising temperatures and climate change, which was already among us, we decided to join forces to continue the joint project but now completely indoors. In 2018 we founded Ekonoke and apart from our previous crops, we started several projects to cultivate species at risk due to climate change, saffron, blueberries, and hops. The results were all promising, but we focused on hops when we saw the great interest in our project.

‍

‍

What are some of the biggest challenges facing Ekonoke in the future? 

‍

Ekonoke's main challenge, like that of any vertical farming company, is energy consumption, but we believe that with the use of a mix of renewable energy and the knowledge we are generating about the crop, its needs and particularities, we will soon be a fully sustainable company. At the moment we have already managed to reduce water consumption for fertigation by 15 times compared to the field, from an average of 2700L to 180L per plant per cycle. And we are a CO2 sink, as we use the CO2 generated by the brewing industry to introduce it into our growing rooms.

‍

‍

What is unique about Ekonoke compared to competitors? 

‍

We know that other big companies have tried, but apparently, they have not succeeded. We are entrepreneurs and perhaps we have that strength and energy that not everyone else has. We are a multidisciplinary team made up of biotechnologists, agronomists, chemists, economists, and financiers, and since we decided to go for hops we have used all our resources and strength on it. Perhaps betting on a single crop and not diversifying has helped us.

‍

How do you measure the impact of Ekonoke so far? (Revenue, Employees, Customer Quantity, Production Volume) etc? 

‍

So far we are a team of 11 people, but the intention is to grow rapidly with the development of our new facilities in Galicia. In September we opened a 1200m2 pilot plant to focus on scale-up and by the end of 2024 we will open the next 10000m2 facility in A Coruña for our brewing partner Estrella Galicia. We are achieving, depending on the variety of hops grown, between 800g and 1200 grams of dry flower per plant per cycle, with superior quality in terms of essential oils and alpha acids. We plan to grow the same amount of hops on 1 hectare as is grown on 40 hectares outdoors. More importantly, without the use of herbicides and pesticides. We are also in talks with other potential customers in Germany and also in Japan and we are developing the design of another hop-growing plant within the 100+Accelerator scheme of ABinBEV. For the time being, we cannot say more.

‍

What have you learned that you wish you knew when you joined or started the company? 

‍

One of the main things I learned was that mistakes are part of the progress of a start-up. You don't have to be afraid of them, but when they happen, you have to act quickly to fix them so that they don't happen again. In all entrepreneurial companies, in order to succeed, you have to make mistakes and all the mistakes we have made over the last 6 years have helped us to advance and improve.

‍

How can people connect with you or learn more about Ekonoke?

‍

The easiest way is via LinkedIn or my email address javier.ramiro@ekonoke.com, I would be happy to talk about science, and crops at risk from climate change, and vertical farming.

‍

‍

‍