Vanilla Vida: Automated vanilla farms produce nutrient-rich and higher-yielding resilient crops
12 Mar 2024 | Vanilla Vida
Vanilla Vida specializes in smart greenhouses to produce vanilla with a greater density of beneficial compounds, higher yields and shortened growth times, while sheltering these crops from erratic weather conditions. We speak to Oren Zilberman, co-founder and CEO, about addressing the vanilla sector’s historic challenges with new automated systems.
This is Benjamin Ferrer for Food ingredients first, and I'm joined by Oren Silberman, and he's the co-founder and CEO of Vanilla Vida, speaking to us about some advancements in the supply chain shift towards automated vanilla production.
Oren, what are some of your comments on the key challenges in the vanilla space that we typically see suppliers and producers facing?
And then, can you please segue into explaining how your company works with new technologies to deliver advancements?
So, hey, Benjamin, the first question is, what is the biggest challenge?
2, climate change and price fluctuation.
Both of them affect the entire industry, doing some difficulty for the demand, and not building a very, very stable.
Ecosystem from the farmers all the way to the final product.
And this is exactly where Vanilla Vida is, is, is, is going inside.
We are building a, a, entire vertical integration company, a start-up company that is combining agriculture and curing industry that actually build a much more stable, strong supply chain that can give the entire industry the power or the, the strength and value for the long term.
You bring a lot of new technology to this existing ecosystem.
Can you share some insights about the final product and how the quality is influenced?
So yeah, Vanil Vida focus as a startup is, is to create, what we call the most concentrated vanilla beans in the world.
When we focus specifically on one compound, we're talking about the vanillin, and we can actually tailor the aroma to a specific application based on the customer needs.
So this is the two, let's say, main things that we as a company can create a unique value in the market for the one who needed the most concentrated vanilla beans in the market.
And how are you currently working with traditional farmers in this unique approach?
And how are you building this infrastructure into existing supply chains for vanilla?
So, Vanilla Vida is, is starting to be a global company since 2024.
We are expanding outside of Israel to be located in two more new locations.
One is in Uganda, and the second one is in Mexico, are involved with traditional farmers coming in the way that we are actually building a big range of portfolio of products that are all organic, and all of them coming.
Only from traditional farmers.
So we are actually helping to our farmers to do the conversion from doing like a regular agriculture techniques to be specialized in one crop and be organic, and then, you can actually have a better income for the long term with our own farmers.
In the same time, we're building our infrastructure of greenhouses that's working side by side.
So, you've already gained some traction with your climate controlled vanilla growth facilities.
I'd like to ask you, how are you planning to expand your current systems and what are some of the highlights along your expansion targets?
So Our current, er, er, let's say, er Growing system, it, it's, it's in the way that we're trying to reinvent the way vanilla is growing, mainly for the industry, in the way that we can actually build a much More efficient infrastructure that create a, a product that can actually help the world to consume more natural ingredients.
It's based on precision agriculture, and we are fully controlling this one.
We are not, doing a SAS company.
We are building our own vertical integration operation, in several locations, all over the world.
A little bit kind of a duplicate what companies like.
By Calibu or, or other big er er companies in the Cocoa or in the coffee industry did before us er for many years.
And your activities tie into a broader, far-reaching trend, and, you know, companies are leaning more towards automation as a key driver of activities.
What can you comment about the shift towards, automated manufacturing and harvesting and processing of tailor-made products, and how is the mindset, how is the mindset shifting in the industry?
So, usually automation, it's, it's, it's a, it's a big area, and for each companies can add different value.
Automation usually is not really Very cheap to convert from a, a non-automation to automation.
The good value of automation, it's actually can increase quality for most companies, for most industries, and for us, it's the same.
So we're using several techniques of Several automated equipments, both in the agriculture and in the industry that can actually do one thing and one thing only, increase quality, not to convert different numbers of employees.
Thank you very much, Oren, for your insights.
Thank you very much, Benjamin.
