Built All at Once: What an 18-Month, 12-Hectare Desert Build Teaches About Scale Risk
When Ryan Archer arrived on site in 2018, the project had been described to him as a greenhouse. What he found was a 12-hectare construction site in the desert outside Al Ain, about an hour and 45 minutes inland from Dubai, near the Omani border. Archer, now co-founder of Horizon Growers, had spent his career delivering large capital assets across Qatar and the UAE. He had never set foot inside a high-tech greenhouse.
“Much like probably a number of people involved in that project in the very early days, I massively underestimated what it was that was going to be undertaken”
The facility, backed by a Munich-based conglomerate in a joint venture with a UAE semi-government agricultural organization, would become the largest semi-closed greenhouse in the country, producing 6,000 tonnes of fresh tomatoes annually for the local market. How it got built is a case study in scale risk that applies well beyond the Gulf.
And, you can listen to the full episode (ep. 283) of CropTalk featuring Ryan Archer of Horizon Growers on CropTalkMedia.com, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.