Showa Denko (President: Hideo Ichikawa) has achieved the delivery of 25 plant cultivation systems of fully artificial type loaded with high-efficiency LED. The plant factory is defined as a facility to cultivate plants by controlling the required environments like light and temperature to grow plants in a closed space.

According to the statistics of Japan Greenhouse Horticulture Association, there are 414 plant factories in our country as of the end of March 2015, and artificial lights of fluorescent lamps or LED are used in 185 factories out of them. In comparison with the same period as last year, the artificial light type increased by 12% and grew nearly three times more than that in March 2011.

“SHIGYO Unit” of SDK is a plant cultivating system of fully artificial light which adjusts the strength balance of LED’s red and blue and employs the SHIGYO Method for alternate irradiations, so that it may respond to 33 sorts of cultivation items including mainly lettuce and herbs. The system is characteristic in that nearly 10 days on the average can be saved comparing with a fluorescent irradiation system of similar artificial light type, while power rate is controlled to half.

The SHIGYO Method an original technology developed jointly by SDK and Professor Masayoshi Shigyo of Yamaguchi University Agriculture Department and possesses 15 peripheral patents. The red LED of SDK loaded on the system is a product to produce with the world-highest efficiency a red light of 660nm wavelength which is important to grow vegetables. Showa Denko Gas Products of the SDK Group is in charge of supplying carbon dioxide to promote photosynthesis. The gas consumption is said to be about ten 30-kg cylinders in a factory of 3000 nursery plant /day class.

It was a trigger to develop the business that the efforts to find new applications of LED reached the idea of plant factory in the midst of Lehman Shock in September 2008. In the course of seeking to maximize the effect of LED while controlling costs, SDK advanced into designing of equipment as a whole, completing the first plant factory in April 2013 and then constructing a total of 25 factories over the country up to now.
In the industrial gas field, Kyoei Kogyo of Mino City, Gifu Prefecture introduced “SHIGYO Unit” and is planning to start selling lettuce in coming July this year.

Hironori Ara sales manager of SDK’s Green Innovation Project of Business Development Center explained the corporate business policy saying, “The aim to install plant factories become polarized to the mass production and value-adding. We provide environments suitable for the cultivation of High-value added vegetables to meet such needs as enrichment of vitamin or kalium by means of controlling light out of three indispensable factors (water, light and air) for agriculture. SDK has a target to deliver four large systems to produce four large systems for more than 3000/day this year.