The making of Armela Farms’ dream warmzone greenhouse near Abu Dhabi

Svensson recently published an interview with Yazan Abu Jaish, Chief Operating Officer at Armela Farms about a project I was fortunate to work on near Abu Dhabi.  

It’s an outstanding project and Yazan has accomplished something very special. If you haven’t seen it already, I really recommend you look it up. 

The story of how Yazan and the team went from low-tech growers 14 years ago to operators of a computer-controlled, robotized, high-tech, 30,000m² project today is pretty awesome.  

As Svensson’s contact point for the project, alongside Ton Habraken and Hugo Plaisier, I thought you might be interested in what happens behind the scenes on a project like this. 

By the time I met Yazan, my consultant colleagues Ton and Hugo had already worked with Van der Hoeven Horticultural Projects in the early phase. 

I subsequently did a talk on PARperfect Cooling at a Plant Empowerment expo in Dubai organized by Hoogendoorn, the climate computer company.  

That’s where I met Yazan. He was full of excitement about Plant Empowerment, and the precise light control possibilities of PARperfect, and came up to me after the meeting and asked me to visit Armela. I travelled there in the autumn of 2023 and again in the spring of 2024.  

Mr. Yazan Abu Jaish & Pieter Mol

Ton and Hugo had already done important early work. I think it’s one of the best parts of the way we get to work on projects at Svensson: a kind of triangle approach with three corners. 

Firstly, the builder knows that they can turn to Svensson to provide screen advice when they are still drawing the project. Ton and Hugo provided that. Then there will be meetings and help during the project, for guidance on installation, for example.  

Finally, and more recently, I’ve been working with Yazan on how the screens are performing in practice. We did some work together on the set points of the screens in the morning, so that we could improve performance further. 

Yazan was at Greentech in Amsterdam in June of 2024. He’s very acquisitive of new knowledge and he travels frequently to Netherlands. He told me he was really happy with things in Abu Dhabi and that everything was working very well.  

On a project like this, you sometimes have to step back and think back over the journey that’s been travelled. This is a grower, albeit a highly educated and talented agronomist, whose starting point was as a seasonal, low-tech wintertime horticulturist – basically shutting up shop for the summer.  

Now he is head of operations at a greenhouse that grows leafy greens year-round when outdoor temperatures can and do reach 50 ⁰C. Armela Farms has landed off-take agreements with the likes of Carrefour, Spinneys and LuLu, not to mention leading restaurants and hotels. For 500kg of lettuce, they used to need 45 colleagues. Now they produce 4,500kg with just 25.  

Their produce is swapping out greens that used to come in refrigerated containers from Europe,Lebanon,Iran & Jordan, and even be flown in so a restaurant could serve fresh quality.

Personally, I’ve learned from this how well things work with that combination of a strong owner with the capital to invest, combined with an inspired agronomist. From the outset, Yazan was talking about the precise light level he was seeking. His precise requirement is another thing you’ll find in the original article here.  

Yazan’s ambition for Armela Farms was both extraordinarily high and determinedly precise. It’s been a real pleasure for us at Svensson to be part of that vision and to strive to deliver our part of.

PS. Recently I was joined at Svensson by a new recruit who will specialize in business development in the Middle East and North Africa. I’m looking forward to introducing Farid Ellakany to Yazan and the team, and to more visits we have planned in Saudi Arabia and Morocco.

We invite you to read the interview with Yazan Abu Jaish from Armela Farms here.