Pink Farms

This interview details Pink Farms, an indoor farming company based in Brazil. The interview is with Geraldo Maia, CEO & Co-Founder of Pink Farms.

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What is the origin story of Pink Farms?

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The founding team is composed of three founders, Mateus and Rafaek are siblings and I've met them while we worked at another startup. We worked together for a few years and became friends and decided to open a company together, while deciding we did a deep dive into our interests and we've decided to work with gastronomy and food production. That was the start of the search and it ended with a bright pink light of a picture from a company in Japan doing vertical farming, at that moment we knew what we wanted to do.

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What are some of the biggest challenges facing Pink Farms in the future?

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In LATAM we always face a big challenge which is the cost of capital, for example in Brazil right now, the basic interest rate is 12%, and that is a low point within the last two years, compared to the highest point in the last decades in the US or Europe it increase the difficulty in raising funds to grow, especially when you have a VC like scaling method but you have CAPEX involved. The second biggest challenge is to define where you stop verticalizing the company. For example, today we don't produce our own seeds for leafy greens, but we do aim to develop our own mushroom strains since it can be a bigger operational problem.

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What is unique about Pink Farms compared to competitors?

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Our method of developing the cultivars while creating a low CAPEX approach for the engineering focuses on quality and yield. From what we have been seeing, we can deliver a per-area implementation cost around 3 to 5 times lower than comparable turn key solutions out there.

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What is the current size of your growing area?

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Right now we have two operations running, in total, they amount to 18,000 sq ft, and we have a third one in construction that will add up another 18,000 sq ft on top, around 60 tons/month of production with 80 SKUs.

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Do you use CO2 in your operation today -- if so, how much and what do you pay for it? What are your thoughts in CO2 usage in indoor farms?

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Yes, we use it and we are in talks with partners to implement on our first farm, on a test basis, a direct carbon capture system that will enrich CO2 from the atmosphere so we can use the higher CO2 ppm that we require.

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Energy is a big topic in indoor farming right now. How much do you pay for electricity (kWh)? Is it mainly from the grid or renewables?

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Brazil has over 80% of its energy already coming from renewables. We are in the middle of the change to the "free market" in Brazil, where we can choose directly from what producer we use, so we will have 100% of our energy from renewables by the end of 2024.

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How can people connect with you or learn more about Pink Farms?

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They can follow us on Instagram (@pinkfarms) and LinkedIn, we are always posting news about the system, farms, jobs, etc.

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