Greenswell Growers operates hydroponic greenhouses in Goochland County and grows 700,000 pounds of leafy greens annually. (Photo by Jack Jacobs)
The Goochland-based produce producer continues its facility expansion plans with plans to open hundreds more grocery stores by 2024.
Greenswell Growers, an indoor farming company that grows leafy greens, plans to increase its presence in Food Lion stores by adding to the grocery chain’s 800 stores by the end of this year, said Greenswell’s president and CEO. CEO Carl Gupton said.
Greenswell products are currently available at more than 300 Food Lion stores, including stores in Virginia. This year, the initiative is expected to make locally grown leafy vegetables available throughout Food Lion’s 1,100 stores across the Mid-Atlantic and South.
“Food Lion has really taken off for us in the last few months, for example, adding about 250 stores from where we were a year ago,” Gupton said in a recent interview. “They are definitely our growth customers at this point.”
Including its current Food Lion locations, Greenswell’s products are sold in more than 500 retailers, including local specialty stores like Libby Market and Yellow Umbrella Provisions, as well as chains like Kroger and Harris Teeter.
The continued retail growth coincides with expansion plans for Greenswell’s facility at 1343 Hockett Road in the West Creek Business Park in eastern Goochland.
The company plans to break ground this summer on a $25 million project that will add 134,000 square feet of new facility, 114,000 square feet of which will be greenhouses and the remainder new warehouse space.
Carl Gupton, president and CEO of Greenswell Growers, said: (Photo by Jack Jacobs)
Netherlands-based company VB is developing the project and is also responsible for design work on the new facility. Hourigan has been named the general contractor for the project.
The company said it cost $17 million to build its existing 80,000-square-foot facility, which includes 57,000 square feet of cultivation space and the rest used for packaging, warehousing, and offices. There is.
Gupton said Greenswell currently produces 700,000 pounds of vegetables a year and the expansion of the facility will allow it to produce more than 2 million pounds of vegetables a year. Gupton said the company’s indoor hydroponic cultivation facility can produce larger quantities of produce compared to a similar acreage of land grown outdoors using traditional methods.
“That’s a pretty big number. If you had the same 1.4 acres of land in Salinas, most of your lettuce comes from California, you’d get about 32,000 pounds of profit from that same acreage. From our footprint, you will get (£700,000), so about 25 times more. This is a very efficient, highly automated facility,” he said.
Greenswell’s leafy vegetables are sold as retail products as well as to food service buyers such as restaurants. Gupton said Greenswell has expressed interest in growing a wider variety of produce in the past, but the company expects to continue focusing on leafy vegetables in the expanded space.
The company currently has 16 employees and plans to roughly double the size of its team as it expands.
Greenswell Growers plans to expand with a $25 million project that will add more cultivation space to the indoor farming company’s facilities.
Greenswell has revealed plans to expand the facility in what it calls the “second phase” of development in 2022. The company raised capital last year, some of which was intended to fund the expansion project. Ukrop’s Homestyle Foods is a minority investor in Greenswell.
Greenswell began growing leafy greens at its facilities in 2021 and is marketing it as a more accessible source of leafy greens for customers on the East Coast. Most of the leafy vegetables grown in the United States are grown on the West Coast.
The company’s products are available at stores in Virginia, Maryland, Washington DC, Delaware, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. can.
