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9 Vertical Farming Companies To Look Out For in 2021

One of the beauties of urban and vertical farms are that they can be implemented on both a small scale by individuals or on a large commercial scale, supplying surrounding communities with locally sourced urban farmed goods.

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These companies below are the most high profile vertical farms currently operating around the world. Interested to learn which companies made the list?

Keep on reading!

1. AEssenseGrows

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AEssenseGrows offers both the Ætrium-SmartFarm, a stacked four layer, automated growing system and the Ætrium-4, a tall plant aeroponic system. Both products come with accompanying software controlled through an app. Its app tracks and monitors every aspect of the growing process and its website plainly lays out what the app can regulate.

A free demo is even available for potential customers. AEssenceGrows however warns potential customers that their products are designed for large spaces of 20,000 ft^2 or more which might discourage amateur growers.

2. Agrilution

Agrilution, a German company, offers Plantcube, a small indoor greenhouse with no manual planting required. Like many urban farming equipment companies, Agrilution offers an app that tracks the growing cycle of all eight crops offered to give users all information needed for each type of vegetable and how to best utilize Plantcube.

Buyers should be aware that at €2,979.00 ($3,355.40), Plantcube might be out of the price range of amateur growers. Plantcube is also only available for citizens of a select few European countries.

3. Altius Farms

Altius Farms offers customers a vertical aeroponics system called “The Tower Garden” and separates its equipment by size on their website. The smallest towers are intended for households, schools, and communal gardens. The next largest towers are intended for small, indoor farms while their largest vertical aeroponic towers are for outdoor, commercial farms.

They purely sell the towers and don’t appear to offer any advice. Their website is rather barebones and makes no showing of the science behind their product so buyer beware.

4. Heliospectra

Swedish company Heliospectra offers several distinct models of LED growing lights for greenhouses and other controlled plant growth environments and shines amongst the competition with its two offerings: helioCORE™ and helioCARE™.

The former is an app which allows customers to monitor the hardware status of their designated growing areas and adjust the lighting via the company’s app while the latter is a technical service which includes a team of consultants who can offer strategies to best utilize natural and LED lighting, training sessions, installation, and pilot programs.

6. Freight Farms

Freight Farms distinguishes itself by dealing only with urban farms containable within the confines of freight containers.

Requiring just limited space, F.F.’s product “The Greenery” combines a new system of vertical panels of five channels each distinct from the usual growing columns with LED lighting to keep plants alive, which can be angled to better suit the crops’ needs.

Customers can plant within The Greenery by rows, by alternating between larger crops and smaller ones, or linearly with small herbs and leafy greens.

7. Illumitex

Another lighting company, Illumitex offers four models of LED lights, each with their own features. Illumitex focuses on two modes of growing (greenhouses or indoor spaces) and separates one crop from all others on its website—cannabis.

The company promises customers direct access to “design experts, engineers, experienced growers, and plant scientists” for finding the best solutions for their growing situations. For those curious, the company can provide online guides for growing advice and publicly cites the case studies behind its products.

8. Surna

While it doesn’t come right out and say it, Surna’s choice of pictures on its website and unique services upon request make it pretty clear that it is a company centered around helping its customers grow just cannabis.

For those new vertical farmers who only want to grow one type of crop, Surna might be the best fit amongst all companies on this list. Its products, services, and growing resources all focus on the cultivation of marijuana from seed to harvest.

Surna even offers a way to control the odor emanating from buds in order to comply with various cities’ zoning laws, something no other company on this list offers its customers.

9. Urban Crop Solutions

Urban Crop Solutions, a Belgian company, does not mess around with what it offers.

Unlike some on the list, U.C.S doesn’t just offer one product like say LED lighting, it offers the whole package for someone who has nothing yet save for an empty space as it’s a one stop shop for those looking for the total infrastructure of a hydroponics system and even sells seeds, plant substrates, and nutrients for its systems’ waterbeds.


For those new to the world of hydroponics, U.C.S. does send a team to offer training on growing techniques for their new, massive equipment. Clearly, this company does not cater to the faint of heart or people who want to have keep their farms on a micro scale.

Their ultimate product is called “the Plant Factory,” with a possible size of 1,399,308 ft^ 2.

These companies, running vertical and urban farming operations at the commercial scale in some of the worlds largest cities, are enterprises to watch out for, if you have not seen their products on the shelf of your local grocery store, you may see them soon!

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