- Oishii has opened a 237,000-square-foot vertical strawberry farm, Amatelas Farm, in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, powered by renewable energy and serving as the main hub for Koyo strawberries from Japan.
- The facility, supported by $134 million raised in a Series B funding round, aims to overcome production constraints and meet high market demand.
- Spanning several football fields, the farm uses nearly 50 AI-equipped robots to optimise growing conditions and can produce over 20 times more berries than the previous facility, primarily powered by a 50-acre solar field.
- Oishii plans to expand into new East Coast markets, trial new berry varieties, and introduce a new strawberry variety in 2024, maintaining a long-term strategy focused on taste and technological innovation.
Vertical farming company Oishii has officially opened its 237,000-square-foot strawberry-farming facility in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, named the Amatelas Farm after the Japanese Goddess of the Sun.
The farm, powered by renewable energy, represents a new, more efficient model for indoor farming.
It will now serve as the main production hub for Oishii’s Koyo strawberries, which are derived from a berry native to the Koyo region of Japan.
Earlier this year, Oishii raised $134 million in a Series B funding round, during which CEO and co-founder Hiroki Koga hinted at this new facility.
Koga explained that the facility addresses the company’s production limitations, noting that despite high market demand, expanding their reach has been challenging due to limited production capacity.
Amatelas Farm spans several football fields and consists of individual farm units, each containing 250 moving racks of strawberries.
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Nearly 50 robots equipped with AI and visual recognition technology detect the ripeness of the fruit before picking it, and they also gather data to optimise environmental conditions like light, temperature, and wind speed.
The new facility can grow more than 20 times the number of berries compared to Oishii’s previous facility and is primarily powered by a 50-acre solar field nearby.
This increased capacity will enable Oishii to expand into new markets along the East Coast of the U.S. While other facilities are under construction, the company will concentrate its Koyo Berry production at Amatelas Farm and continue growing its Omakase strawberry and Rubi tomato at its existing 72,000-square-foot farm in Jersey City.
Oishii also plans to try new berry varieties with retailers and introduce a new strawberry variety later in 2024.
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CEO Hiroki Koga emphasised that Oishii has always prioritised taste over rapid timelines, maintaining a long-term strategy rather than short-term gains.
Reflecting on the new facility, Koga said, “We run towards problems once thought to be impossible to solve. In just two years, we’ve developed technological breakthroughs at Amatelas Farm that make our growing process significantly more efficient, yet just as delicious.
Our desire to maintain this exponential rate of innovation is driven by a deeply human need: we see vertical farming as a critical part of the solution to our failing agriculture system.
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