Canada’s first fully automated greenhouse just opened at a farm in Ontario

The first fully automated greenhouse in Canada just opened, and now it’s just recently harvested its first crop of leafy greens.

Haven Greens was just launched at Kinghaven Farms, a farm with nearly 60 years of history behind it known for its thoroughbred horse breeding and racing located in King City, Ontario. The sustainable year-round greenhouse is set to produce a whopping 10,000 pounds of lettuce per day, or 3.6 million pounds per year.

Right now they’re starting by producing baby green leaf lettuce, a baby red and green leaf mix, and baby spring mix, and it’s as good for the environment as it is for your body. The automated greenhouse system provides a more sustainable alternative to seasonal field-grown lettuce, as it’s more reliably available for year-round daily harvest.

Not only do locally produced Haven Greens have a five-week shelf life compared to the two-week shelf life of 97 per cent of grocery store greens that come from the United States and Mexico, they actually also don’t need to be washed due to being grown in a touchless, pesticide-free facility.

Jay Willmot is the president of Kinghaven Farms and now the founder and CEO of Haven Greens. Since his university years, he’s found the unreliable availability of quality greens and dependence on the United States to get them has made him, in no uncertain terms, “pissed.”

“As a university student at Dalhousie studying commerce, I once had a professor who asked us to make a list of things that pissed us off because those were going to turn into our business ideas. At the top of my list was grocery store lettuce,” Willmot tells YourCityWithIN.com.

“I felt like the greens available in store were never quite fresh, and always just a few days away from expiration. That frustration, and the knowledge that Canada imports the majority of its greens from the U.S., led to the creation of Haven Greens, which aims to provide a fresh, local alternative and improve domestic food sovereignty.”

Willmot is the third generation of a family of farmers based in King City, and while they sustained themselves in the horse racing industry they weren’t afraid to branch out with changing times.

By the 2000s, they were getting into beekeeping, small scale vegetable production, renewable energy and solar plant development. This experience gave Willmot the background knowledge and inspiration to start up Haven Greens at Kinghaven.

“I initially explored setting up Haven Greens as a vertical farm but, through my travels and research, eventually landed upon the concept of automated greenhouses, which scale more efficiently and grow more consistent crops, making it ideal for my vision of producing high-quality greens year-round to combat food insecurity,” says Willmot.

From there, they partnered with Green Automation and appointed hydroponic systems expert Eric Highfield their chief agricultural officer, breaking ground on the project in 2023. It took a lot of fine tuning to get to this point where they’ve had their first harvest years later.

“With our first harvest only five weeks behind us, the biggest factor is simply the timing it takes to get onto retail shelves. Thankfully, the response to our products has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s just that expanding into retail involves a natural process, introductions, sampling, discussions, and onboarding, which takes time,” says Willmot.

“What helps us overcome any hurdles is our product itself, it speaks volumes. When someone gets their hands on our greens or visits our facility, they don’t just see a cutting-edge operation, they experience the exceptional quality firsthand.”

Haven Greens is now stocked at Foodland, Pusateri’s, Coppa’s Market, Amelia’s Market, all Summerhill Market locations and other Ontario retailers.

“It’s been extremely rewarding to receive positive feedback from our customers who’ve experienced the crispness and flavour of our greens first-hand,” says Willmot.

Even at 10,000 pounds of lettuce per day, Haven Greens is still only in its first phase of production with operations covering five acres. In phase two, they’re planning to double that and expand to 10 acres.

“Production will increase significantly and we’ll be able to support Canada’s domestic greens supply on an even larger scale,” says Willmot.