The Operator’s Edge: What Dirk Aleven Learned Running Greenhouses on Four Continents
Dirk Aleven did not grow up in a greenhouse. He is Dutch, but he came to this industry as an outsider, a business advisor who got pulled into CEA when a Ukrainian client asked him to help raise capital. That distance from the conventional Dutch grower path turned out to be an advantage. Dirk spent the years since building FoodVentures , a company that takes full operational and financial responsibility for greenhouse assets on behalf of investors, deploying its own growers and running the P&L. The portfolio spans Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, China, Hawaii, and the United States.
When Equilibrium Capital called looking for someone to step into Revol Greens approximately two years ago, Dirk already had a working relationship with them through the AppHarvest bankruptcy. What he found at Revol was a company with the right assets in the right locations, running like a corporate bureaucracy instead of a produce operation.
What Was Actually Happening on the Farm
When Dirk walked the Texas facility for the first time, he noticed a sign on the wall directing the flow of new hires to walk to the left. People were standing idle throughout the operation. The company was adding headcount to solve a production problem that headcount was not going to fix.