To meet global agricultural demand, growers are moving beyond the scope of traditional farming methods and embracing the potential of vertical farming. Since its introduction, the practice has proved instrumental in helping growers combat the lack of farming resources (water and power), high costs, and low crop yield.
However, vertical farms are devoid of natural sunlight, and plants have to rely on artificial lighting for sustenance. This presents two specific challenges:
1. A single type of lighting solution isn’t robust enough to enhance the growth of different plants.
2. Conventional LED lights create immense heat, increasing the parasitic load within vertical farms, affecting the quality of plants.
As such, there is a growing need for a reliable and energyefficient lighting system to meet the year-round growth demand and foster sustainability.
Addressing this need in indoor farming is Pangea Global Technologies. With its RapidGrow LED Technologies and Visionaire solutions, the company is one of the leading manufacturers of highperformance, specification-grade LED lighting for the agricultural space. It combines the power of LED lighting solutions with smart, wireless technology to offer energy-efficient and environmentfriendly solutions to growers across various horticultural projects, including indoor farms, greenhouses and vertical farms.
“Over the last 22 years, we have specialized in assessing clients’ electrical, physical, and deployment needs and have built a solution that best fits their specifications,” states Bryan Fried, Chairman and CEO, Pangea Global Technologies.
VERAY: Transforming Indoor Farming
Pangea Global Technologies’ team perceives indoor farms as living biosystems constantly evolving to maintain optimal climates for specific grows that impact plants’ yield, taste, and texture. With this understanding, the company built the VERAY, a modular food production light developed with a remote power source for fostering indoor vertical farming at scale. This product was designed for maximum flexibility in terms of deployment with a remote power source. It allows growers to place the light sources at any location relative to the canopy without worrying about the heat, positioning, or weight and not get affected by the device’s form factor. It also helps minimize the heat in the canopy, which can be highly detrimental to plants. With VERAY, growers can easily control the microclimate of the grow environment and ensure the plants grow successfully.
Since its inception, Pangea Global Technologies has been extremely customer-focused, taking inputs from them about their demands for their unique grow environments. Consequently, the company has built 85 or 90 percent of its products with different features and specifications, having multiple wattages for leafy greens and cannabis production. The company acknowledges these demand changes and is flexible enough to provide tailored solutions.
Simplifying Indoor Growing with Robust Lighting Solutions
Pangea Global Technologies’ intelligent Pangea Software forms the backbone for VERAY and its other product portfolio. This innovative technology enables clients to monitor and control every fixture at single, or multiple grow facilities to maximize energy savings. It offers an infinitely variable individual control of each light source and the ability to monitor key metrics in indoor farms through various sensors. Leveraging the Pangea Software, growers can examine and keep track of aspects such as temperature, humidity, soil condition, moisture, carbon dioxide, and PAR values. It also allows them to control numerous fixtures’ lighting intensity and schedule from a single, centralized platform that can be used on any web browser or handheld device. The system connects these controls and gateways through Pangea Global Technologies’ proprietary cloud software and allows growers to manage them via PangeaLink’s centralized dashboard. Additionally, the Pangea Software houses an alert system to notify growers if there is any anomaly in the use of water, power, or nutrients within the grow facility and equips them to take proactive measures to maintain an optimal grow condition.
Over the last 22 years, we have specialized in assessing clients’ electrical, physical, and deployment needs and have built a solution that best fits their specifications
The Pangea Software is modeled as an open architecture IoT platform allowing growers to seamlessly track every aspect of their operation through the dashboard. Its network is based on a Zigbee self-healing mesh that proves to be highly beneficial to them. In case one device malfunctions, the signal automatically jumps to the nearest device, preventing the entire grow from being compromised. In addition, all of Pangea Global Technologies’ products have a 256-bit encryption for data security that permits the company to perform closed-ended data gathering and analytics. This further enables growers to have a repeatability of a successful plant recipe. The software can also offer automation capabilities to reduce workforce requirements and avoid interference with the grow’s microclimate. The company also possesses in-house manufacturing prowess, allowing it to customize products to best suit clients’ demands.
Driven by its innovative streak, Pangea Global Technologies is constantly testing various spectrums and adding new features to its portfolio. It has added UV chips into particular spectrums for grow facilities that need it as much as the red, blue, and white light spectrum. The company has also incorporated blue chips and different nanometer red chips in its products. Pangea Global Technologies is also actively partnering with chip manufacturers to create prototypes that the company can test in its lab, analyze and identify the chips relevant to clients’ workflow. Most importantly, the company is in constant discussion with different device manufacturers to build out the latest and greatest device for the grow. These include automated picking equipment, visualization software, and par sensors. Pangea Global Technologies is equipped to bring any new device and technology into its platform so that growers can deploy its products easily, showcasing its integration capability.
“We build everything to order and if clients’ requirements change, we change and evolve our offerings. That’s our secret sauce,” says Fried.
Envisioning a New Horizon for Indoor Farming
Over the years, Pangea Global Technologies has scripted many success stories, with more than 90 percent of all its initial products being sold with the Pangea Software, even when it was optional. Going beyond indoor lighting solutions, the company has become the go-to partner for clients’ fertigation and HVAC requirements.
One of the major driving factors for this success is Pangea Global Technologies’ expert team, with many legacy employees that have been at the organization for over 10 to 15 years. They bring extensive institutional knowledge and experience that helps improve the company’s solutions. This diverse team has essentially spearheaded the transformation of Pangea Global Technologies from being a manufacturing firm to becoming a technology company and propelled the creation of the first version of the Pangea Software.
Backed by this incredible team, Pangea Global Technologies is paving the way to improve its capabilities by considering integrating various solutions into its platform that will potentially enhance the grow environment. This will make grow facilities commercially viable and reduce costs and waste. The company is laser-focused on reducing food waste by promoting portion control initiatives, enhancing plants’ appearance, freshness, and shelf-life, and decreasing transport costs significantly.
“We are capable of taking our technology and exporting it to any country across the globe. Our solutions tackle serious issues such as world hunger by empowering growers to grow where people live,” concludes Fried.
