Meissner AG

This interview details Meissner AG, a company based in Germany. The interview is with Tom Bastian, Key Account Manager at Meissner AG.

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What is the origin story of Meissner AG?

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Our company celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2022. This makes us a very old company. However, we have only been working on the topic of vertical farming since 2020. After two years of development, including our own test farm, we launched our ideas on the market in 2023 and were able to install the first system at a customer's site at the end of 2023.

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What are some of the biggest challenges facing Meissner AG in the future? 

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The main difficulty we see is that the topic of vertical farming has not yet achieved the required level of acceptance. Cost pressure is also a key issue that we are dealing with. Our basic target is to build a profitable farm. Certain features, such as low energy costs, are advantageous for this. We would therefore like to see more farmers get in touch with the topic and also achieve wider acceptance among the population. Here we see certification as an organic product as particularly helpful, which is unfortunately not yet possible at the moment.

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What is unique about Meissner AG compared to competitors? 

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What sets us apart from our competitors is our cultivation system. With the patented OrbiPlant system, we can work much more energy-efficiently compared to conventional shelf systems, while at the same time achieving higher growth rates and lower water consumption. This puts us in a much better position to withstand the cost pressure on the market.

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What are some other relevant metrics of the company (units deployed, production quantity, team size, etc.)?

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Our company has around 200 employees, but the Vertical Farming team is much smaller. Around 15 engineers are employed in this area. However, our size gives us clear advantages in the production of the systems, as we can access the entire production capacity. In addition to our headquarters in Germany, we also have a subsidiary in China near Shanghai and several cooperation partners in North and South America. This allows us to operate worldwide without any problems.

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What are some goals in 2024 and beyond for Meissner AG?

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Basically, we have set ourselves the goal of expanding the customer's existing farm and installing at least one more farm. In addition, the development of the plant in terms of efficiency and climate neutrality is continuing steadily.  Of course, we also aim to focus more on the topic of vertical farming in order to make the supply of food more sustainable.

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How can people connect with you or learn more about Meissner AG?

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You are welcome to visit us on our homepage https://orbiplant.com/. Of course, you can also contact someone from our team directly. It is also possible to request further information material. Finally, we are of course also represented on LinkedIn and Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbuBSpyCQrA).

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