Hello, World!
It’s time to move on to new challenges! Our 5th Cooltainer is ready. And to mark the occasion, we decided to think big. Our mission is global. We want to be the first to give everyone access to excellent fruits and vegetables grown with no pesticides. That’s it. So it’s time to pack our bags and head to a new country. Where are we going first? We’re telling you everything 🚀
We’re Heeeeere! 🌏
Two years ago, we launched the Agricool adventure in Paris. The problem is huge here. As founders, we’ve always said that we wanted to be able to eat great strawberries where we live. So Paris was the right place to start. We wanted to develop a new way of production, and today, it’s live! We have 4 Cooltainers in Paris and our strawberries are sold at Monoprix. We’re going to keep moving forward here so that everyone in Paris can taste our berries very soon. Stay tuned, there will be more good news coming in the next few months 💪
In the meantime, we keep getting thousands of requests from around the world, which started from the very beginning of the project. We made this map all the way back in January 2016.
And we heard you! It’s time for us to think bigger. We want to find the way to deploy our solution quickly and efficiently.
A new challenge! 💪
Where to begin? Our thought process was simple. We wanted to go to a country where fruits and vegetables are hard to come by, aren’t usually of very high quality, and are typically produced far away (and thus have a huge environmental impact). With that in mind, there are still lots of options. For example there are countries with extreme climates, such as Iceland or the United Arab Emirates. There are also countries where space is a luxury, such as Singapore or many other Asian metropolises.
Sometimes, we came across things we’d never have imagined. In Japan, for example, in the City’super store, you can buy a strawberry for 22 dollars. 22 dollars…for one strawberry. Nuts!
And then we had the opportunity to meet the founders of The Sustainable City. This is a project launched by Diamond Developers 3 years ago. Their goal? Make Dubai the city of the future.
The Sustainable City! 🌏
From A to Z, everything is designed by thinking about social, economic and environmental impacts. In other words, from recovering water to producing fruits and vegetables to judging the quality of life for inhabitants, everything is considered for how it will respond to the needs of tomorrow’s cities. A key element of those cities? Finding a way to have zero carbon footprint. We’ll let you take a guided video tour here 👇
Urban agriculture at the heart of the project
The climate of the United Arab Emirates is not favorable for the production of fruits and vegetables. It is hot and dry (over 50º C right now) and arable land is scarce. It’s almost impossible to grow nearby. What happens? Today, more than 85% of what is consumed there is imported. Every day, that represents 11,000 tons of food. More than 20% of the fruits and vegetables come from India. That means the fruit is traveling an average of 2000 km, most often by boat.
Nutrition is a huge issue there. The city of tomorrow should be able to furnish its inhabitants with high quality food produced in a responsible manner.
To get there, the project started with 3000 m2 dedicated to urban agriculture (out of 46 total hectares). There are also 11 biodomes (photo below) kept at ideal production temperatures thanks to a ventilated watering system. These also serve as testing environments for producing fruits and vegetables for the city’s inhabitants.
Basically, for us Sustainable City is an ideal location and an incredible opportunity for taking our first international steps (the first of many 🤞). How will we do it? Georges, our first employee and Cooltivator, will be going down there to open this new chapter in Agricool’s history. During the next few months, the goal will be to learn as much as possible (adapting the job of the Cooltivator, meeting our fans, letting people taste strawberries…) to then aid in our later installations. We’ll be sharing the adventure with you: what life is like for Georges down there, the people he meets, the local community, events… Everything that is the Agricool story!
And tomorrow? 🚀
This launch is the beginning of a new, huge challenge for Agricool. It will let us challenge the limits of our model and improve to be able to then install Cooltainers across the entire world. Get ready, you’ll soon be able to find Agricool strawberries on any continent 😍
