Norway's first fully automated vegetable line reaches Coop stores with a 12-week shelf life

SINTEF describes the change in keeping quality as a tripling, and the baseline it gives for lettuce and herbs is 2 to 4 weeks ^[10]. Twelve weeks against four is three times; against two it is six ^[23]. Both figures describe how long a bag can sit before it has to be pulled, and neither measures what a store actually discards; Bakås's expectation that "much less has to be thrown away" ^[11] follows from the shelf-life number without being tested against sales data.

The project looked at vertical farming, indoor growing in a controlled environment with crops in stacked layers ^[18]. One seed goes into a unit on a multilevel shelf, the roots grow down into flowing water carrying nutrients, and the plant grows on top ^[8]. The fastest lettuces are ready in just over two weeks ^[9]. "In this facility, no one touches the lettuce from the time it is sown, grown and packaged until it ends up on the store shelf and is finally opened by the customer at home in their kitchen," said Ottar Bakås, a SINTEF researcher ^[4]. He and colleagues studied the status of automated indoor vegetable production in Norway and the scope for more of it ^[6]. Bakås said keeping the crop out of contact with human hands removes disease-risk sources that could reduce product quality ^[20]. Aleksander Lillienskiold, a former SINTEF researcher on the project ^[5], said the closed environment means "there are no pesticides or insects, so when the lettuce is ready for harvest, it can just be cut and bagged right away" ^[19].

The team also visited four other Norwegian growers, none fully automated, each mixing automation with manual work ^[15]. A grower deciding what to buy would want that part in detail. Which tasks those four still do by hand is missing from the published account, along with capital cost, energy use and yield figures ^[24]. Lillienskiold put the limit on capital: "The degree of automation that is suitable will vary. It is also a question of investment," he said ^[16]. On the technology itself he said it "is still common for many tasks to be done by people, but technology has evolved to the point where we can automate manual tasks" ^[17].

The health argument runs through two steps. "Research shows that the more you offer of a product line, the more customers buy. This can have a positive health effect on the population," Lillienskiold said ^[12]. The first step is an association between assortment and sales; the second assumes the extra purchases displace something less healthy. The article does not cite the studies behind either.

On labour, Lillienskiold said: "This will solve staffing challenges. Norway has a shortage of this type of labor" ^[13]. He also expects fewer heavy and dangerous tasks and more varied work in the sector ^[14].

The same shelf-and-water approach suits berries, tomatoes and cucumbers, and the researchers expect more growers to move toward it ^[21]. Bakås said the group hopes "to work on understanding how automation can contribute to this growing model being rolled out to a greater extent in Norway" ^[22].