why don't I start this this is what we
call home this is a picture of our farm
in Abu Dhabi taken in March this could
be a piece of land in any clear arid
climate anywhere in the world
traditional farming on such a piece of
land is incredibly inefficient both in
terms of resource utilization and of
course the quality of production in fact
in the GCC we utilize over 80% of our
freshwater resources producing less than
15% of our food supply and less than 1%
of GDP further the population is growing
quickly and it's making this problem
worse
it's expected by 2030 we'll have over 12
million additional mouths to feed in the
GCC alone and in arid climates around
the world this number is closer to a
billion currently in the face of these
challenges how does the middle-east cope
with it we import over 85% of our fresh
produce and what choice does that leave
a consumer with one local low quality
fresh produce which which is available
but but again very low quality and
seasonal or - extremely expensive
aerated imports this is that same exact
site just three weeks ago this is the
first ever pure harvest smart farm and
this is the future of Agriculture and
arid climates around the world here
harvest has developed a sustainable
climate agnostic technology solution for
food security anywhere in the world we
design build and operate high-tech
greenhouses and what you're seeing here
are images of one of our greenhouses our
vision is to become the region's leading
technology enabled agribusiness
producing a wide variety of crops
sustainably grown always available and
at a materially lower cost than air
freight adem ports we are a pioneer and
controlled environment agriculture
having developed an IOT enabled Triple
Play climate management system that uses
mechanical evaporative
a high-pressure fogging cooling system
all controlled from one brain let us
show you what our brain looks like right
now we're taking you to Abu Dhabi where
you're actually porting into our climate
management system outside the
temperature is currently 28 degrees
we're sorry there it is
sorry 38 degrees with relative humidity
inside or outside of 16 inside
it's a breezy 25 degrees with 64%
humidity and as you can see there are
tons of additional measurements we track
and control everything inside the
greenhouse and in addition we dose co2
which provides additional fuel for the
plants and allows us to accelerate
growth 30% we capture a ton of data and
this data is used to both inform our
design in the future and of course our
operational efficiency the top line is
the climate outside the bottom line is
the climate on the inside and with in
this climate corridor of 16 to 32
degrees you can grow just about anything
anywhere every darn
here we are while our plants are in
plant heaven they produce incredibly
sweet fruit I invite the judges to
actually open up the sample in front of
them please and try our product this is
a Brix meter that measures the sweetness
of the tomato and it's scoring nine
point four world class is eight to ten
and further our plants are incredibly
healthy because our technology helps
them to resist disease and of course
pest pressure and when a pest gets in we
use an army of beneficial insects to
attack that and eliminate that pests our
plants are protected by nature not by
chemicals our competition is in two
tiers local low quality seasonal
production that uses over 240 liters of
water per kilogram of production and
then there's the European import product
or predominantly European using modern
technology but that's higher quality
however expensive and also unsustainable
because it's traveling over 2,000
kilometres to get to us our solution is
7 times 7 to 10 times the yield using
1/7 of the water and it's grown just one
hour from 85% of the population of the
UAE we are gonna scale quickly currently
our farm is producing one ton per day in
this sub scale proof of concept but by
next year we expect to have over a
hundred and twenty thousand square
meters of production in two countries
producing over ten varieties of fresh
produce the market for fresh food veg is
huge globally it's over 250 billion
dollars in the GCC alone over 6 billion
and in our home market of the UAE it's
over a billion and we'll access the
market going direct to retailers and
wholesalers eliminating what is
typically a five step tip to
distribution channel into just 2
lastly we'll do so because we have a
strong and diverse team of engineers
private equity investment professionals
experienced controlled environment
agriculture executives and even
retailers with an X DP from Carrefour
envision a world where any country can
invest in its own food security water
conservation and economic
diversification by deploying
this technology while offering its
people fresh premium produce that is
locally grown that future is now okay
judges before we start the questions how
did it taste
thumbs up thumbs down tastes like
tomatoes good to hear
tastes like it tastes like they should
it's all my package yeah I have a
question can you talk to us a little bit
about your business model how are you
making money all that absolutely so we
design build and operate as we said the
greenhouse but fundamentally we're
selling directly to the retailer or the
hospitality districts distributor or to
customers like Emirates flight catering
well our price points at the retail
level are anywhere from twenty to forty
percent below comparable quality
imported product so for instance this
product you sampled is identical to a
product called core division and those
from the UAE might know it on the
shelves that that retails at 22 to 24
dierence per kilo we expect ours to
retail around nine that's what we're
happened but where are your costs coming
from you have the interest you have the
infrastructure cost and then maintenance
costs it's all big costing I mean that's
all covered within the right that's all
covered within all rights we're cutting
out a big portion of the cost which is
the distribution coming in from Europe
and the way that we also grow allows us
to bring down our cost structure namely
we can probably increase the prices even
beyond what is coming in from Europe but
our business model is to create a brand
the local brand that people can relate
to and that's also low cost people are
very price sensitive and so we don't
want to charge a premium for having a
better product per se and if you own the
land or you're renting the land we
currently our business partner Mahmoud
IDR emirati local national partner has
acquired the land and we've leased it
from him because we're proving a model
everything about this commercial scale
proof of concept was to prove a model
which is that we can assimilate land
design build and operate a high-tech
green house in partnership with locals
we are not looking to eliminate locals
that are farming we want to work with
them to farm differently is your is your
growth based on distribution or
replication like is this something you
want to replicate a lot of to
microphones so you want to kind of
increase the distribution like some in
some places in the world what we're
doing is called a food factory so
fundamentally we need additional
capacity to grow right so in a way as
you saw that slide that showed the scale
up when we get to say 30 Hector's it's
really production per square meter but
our production per square meter is 7 to
10 times that of the low-tech incumbant
farms with 1/7 of the water it is a step
function so it's essentially for us to
grow we build more forms of build more
farms now there's other ways in which we
can finance the farms but ultimately we
build we increase our capacity and sell
them to the market and how big does the
farm has to be for it to make sense very
good question we characterize minimum
efficient scale using the micro economic
term around 3 Hector's however ideally
between 10 and 24 Hector's these things
kind of peak out on your economies of
scale we intend to be building between
10 and 16 Hector's in the next phases
one thing to note as well is that the
land that we have right now we've built
on approximately 1 hectare even though
the growing areas point six sectors
however we have room to scale almost
three acts just on the land where we are
and even the way we've designed our
greenhouse right now is to allow for
scaling we built it to this size because
this is really the maximum amount of
money we can raise in seed capital we
raised five point eight million dollars
pre-revenue pre-revenue and but
ultimately that was the minimum viable
product that we can build now we hope
with this and we can let people taste
the product we can raise more capital
continue building leverage it and then
yes guys limit and if I could revisit
your question earlier which is
counter-intuitively or I would say it's
a it's a feat our thesis really is that
you can actually grow more effectively
and more efficiently here than Europe
and let me I call it the Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations analysis whereby who
should make tires and we should make
high heels if you look at the factors of
production of food its Sun land or in
our case space because we don't need
land we can grow on a rooftop we need
energy water labour and taxes affect any
trade policy in economics of any good
across the border go down that list and
us against Europe or
Hollan for instance which is the second
largest food exporter in the world we
have twice the light levels a fraction
of the labor costs zero percent
corporate tax for 50 years in a treaty
with all the W global markets we have
labored as I mentioned that's relatively
inexpensive we integrate well with solar
there's an abundance of energy in our
region so when you go down those factors
of production counter-intuitively once
you control for climate with technology
well one of the best places in the world
to grow food and as we scale also our
cost structure will decrease
significantly
one of the major cost structures for
example to produce tomatoes for us is
co2 ask I mentioned during the
presentation that we do Co to to improve
the yield photosynthesis for the plants
we're already talking with different
parties about capturing co2 and then
that almost reduces our cost structure
for carbon dioxide by third which is
three percent of our to its point we can
capture that from what we call a green
source so somebody who would otherwise
have MIT that into the atmosphere like a
desalination plant capture that co2 and
create a new utility for them while we
of course reduce our cost structure and
increase our competitiveness against
those import markets all while helping
the UAE reach its Paris climate Accord
commitments I just want to also notice
that you're looking at the brand at the
sticker on the in front maybe one thing
we really okay we're gonna be in the
shelves hopefully in a couple of weeks
so watch out for us but one thing that
we wanted we didn't maybe emphasized so
much is that ultimately we want to do is
build a brand right technologies come
and go but what survives our brands and
so what we want is individual like you
to go into a store tomorrow say up your
harvest strawberries tomatoes whatever
it is I will buy it because I have faith
in this brand now different technologies
what we will do is integrate whatever
other technologies are available and
there's innovations all the time but
what we want is a consumer they don't
really care how it's really grown they
care a price point taste and they want
to know what's sustainable etc and of
course the absolute nutrient density of
our produce is incredibly high and we'll
be measuring that and sharing that with
customers we also measure all kinds of
things that nobody else really in the
market does and we intend to promote
this to retailers to raise the standards
of food in our country the Ministry of
Environment and climate changed last
year banned food in the UAE from several
markets because of health and safety
issues we
an impact focused company we intend to
help address those issues in addition to
building of course a sustainable
business alright give it up for pure
harvest that concludes this