Ottawa, ON — Freight Farms, a pioneer in containerized farming technology, has found a new home with Growcer, the Canadian agritech company that has been enabling year-round, hyper-local food production across North America for more than a decade.

The acquisition follows Freight Farms’ bankruptcy filing in April 2025, which left its global community of farmers facing uncertainty about the future of their operations. On July 28, Growcer acquired the company’s assets, committing to preserve Freight Farms’ legacy while charting a stronger future for its growers.

"We've been doing hydroponics and vertical farming for about five years," says Ahmed Fawzy, CEO of Taza Farms. "We originally grew for human food, supplying London's top restaurants and hotels. We wanted to do something with more impact, so we took our hydroponics experience into animal feed."

That decision led to Taza's first full-scale pilot at Hunsingo Dairy in Groningen, the Netherlands. "This pilot became our first paying customer," Fawzy says. "The feedback has been better than we hoped. The cows went for the fodder straight away, farmers noticed it's easier to digest, and our system delivered a fresh, consistent supply every single day."

"Clients use our farms to integrate a sustainable food supply chain directly into their business models," says Juan Gabriel Succar, Co-Founder of Mexican container farming company, Verde Compacto. The company's 40-foot container farm, the Huvster Pro, is being adopted by stadiums, resorts, universities, and municipalities, and is shipped fully equipped, with digital monitoring, remote support, and optional service extensions.

Succar says the system is designed to meet more than just production targets, offering a certifiable, financeable path to vertical farming for customers prioritizing year-round supply, sustainability indicators, and on-site visibility.

The Haverhill YMCA is hosting a harvest party to celebrate the second anniversary of its Freight Factory hydroponic farm at the city’s Gateway Academy.

The party is Wednesday, Oct. 2, from 4:30-5:30 p.m. at Gateway Academy, 415 Primrose St., Haverhill. Participants are invited to tour the garden and pick their own lettuce.

The indoor container garden is called a “freight farm” because it is set up inside a 40-by-8-foot shipping container painted on the sides in bright colors with the message “The Y Feeds Kids.” As WHAV reported when it opened in October 2023, it was heralded at the first farm of its kind operated by a YMCA in country.

Jort Maarseveen and Tijmen Blok started as two WUR students who believed that everyone should have access to fresh nutritious food anywhere in the world and ended up with Hippotainer.

Hippotainer’s mission is to design and implement smart vertical farms inside shipping containers to enable people anywhere in the world to access fresh vegetables. “We enable food production anywhere on the globe, regardless of the location, whether it's on the North Pole or in the Sahara Desert, we want to be able to make it possible to produce fresh vegetables”

The concept of Hippotainer began while cofounders Jort Maarseveen and Tijmen Blok were doing their Masters at WUR with backgrounds in biology, business, and biosciences.

Agriculture technology leader, AmplifiedAg, continues to lead the way in vertical farming in the corrections industry. The company has made advancements in two significant partnerships with the South Carolina Department of Corrections and Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, in collaboration with reentry program partner Impact Justice and its Growing Justice initiative, and CEA advisor Skout Strategy. 

Merging sustainable, local food access with job training and reentry programming, these projects set a new precedent for how correctional systems can cultivate healthier communities on both sides of the fence while positively impacting recidivism rates. 

• FarmBox Foods partners with healthcare systems to deploy container farms for onsite food production.

• Hospitals use fresh produce for patient meals, wellness programs, and community outreach.

• The systems are designed for non-farmers, with training and long-term operational support.

• Benefits include improved nutritional outcomes, predictable food budgets, and reduced reliance on external suppliers.

• FarmBox Foods is contributing to ESG goals and the growing “food as medicine” movement.

Restaurants in Havana, Cuba are receiving boxes of sprouting vegetable from a small start-up growing business every few day.

Meanwhile, many of the founder’s neighbors struggle to feed their families in Cuba’s worst economic crisis in decades.

The project, called Enparalelo (Parallel Roads), was created by architect Oliesky Fabre. He proudly shows off a 2022 UN World Food Programme award, given to only 10 projects out of 200 in Latin America and the Caribbean for fighting hunger in innovative ways.

Kris Sutton was an aircraft mechanic for 13 years. Now he grows lettuce, a career picked up during the Covid-19 pandemic, and realized on his property in Enfield, Nova Scotia. In some ways, aircraft were simpler.

“When we got the farm,” says Sutton, “I didn’t realize I was going to be a chemist, an electrician, a plumber, as well as a farmer.”

That’s because his is not a traditional farm, with acres, soil, sunlight, and spring rain. His is an indoor, hydroponic, vertical farm, with 9,000 leafy greens growing simultaneously in a 326 square foot shipping container.

A local school celebrated the opening of its on-campus wellness farm with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The Wellness Farm at UMass Chan Medical School was officially unveiled on Friday. It's a 40-foot hydroponic container farm that can produce up to three tons of produce every year.

UMass Chan hopes that the farm will help fight food insecurity in the community. It will provide food for Worcester Public Schools’ North Quadrant schools and the Max Baker Resource Center, a student food pantry located on UMass Chan’s campus, as well as support staff members in need.

One in four Canadians — more than 10 million people — are struggling to put food on the table, according to a new RBC report published in June.

This is the highest level ever recorded in this country, driven by rising costs and limited access to affordable food.

In Ottawa, a new initiative at The Ottawa Mission shows how community collaborations can make a difference in combatting this important issue.

With two new modular vertical farms built in partnership with local ag-tech company Growcer, and with support from RBC Foundation through the Ottawa Community Foundation’s Food Resilience Foundation Fund, the shelter is now producing up to 20,000 pounds of fresh greens annually.

Reinfa has released a smart vertical farming shipping container, offering a complete, ready-to-use farming solution that fits inside either a 20ft or 40ft container. Built for urban farmers, retailers, restaurants, and agri-entrepreneurs, this system makes it possible to grow fresh, sustainable, and pesticide-free produce anytime, anywhere.

The Reinfa farm is designed as a plug-and-grow system, fully equipped with hydroponic and aeroponic racks that are easy to operate. Its multi-layer growing capability allows for single or multiple vertical racks, maximizing harvests within a compact footprint.

Canadian vertical farming company Growcer has announced that it has entered into a strategic alliance with Growtainers, the U.S.-based container farming firm founded by Glenn Behrman.

The announcement comes shortly after Growcer's acquisition of Freight Farms' assets in July, a move that brought more than 500 growers worldwide under its support network.

Growcer CEO Corey Ellis shared the news in a detailed LinkedIn post, framing the alliance as a way to combine strengths while setting realistic expectations for the industry.

What happens when a Boys & Girls Club starts container farming? In Boston Metro South, two Freight Farms hydroponic container farms are doing far more than just growing food.

They are creating hands-on learning opportunities for kids, engaging community volunteers, attracting major donors, and supporting local nonprofits.

Discover how these farms became teaching tools, hands-on labs for youth programs, and a powerful way to bring the community together.

Mario Vitalis, owner and founder of New Age Provisions in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hydroponic farming is a growing industry in Indiana.

“Hydroponic farming allows us to reimagine how and where we can grow food,” says Mario Vitalis. “We are no longer bound to the rules of traditional farming. Technology gives us a new way to farm and a fresh take on the supply chain.”

Vitalis is owner of New Age Provisions, where he grows a variety of leafy greens inside two 40-foot shipping containers on a repurposed used car lot off 10th Street in Indianapolis. His Indiana-based hydroponic farming operation requires no land or soil, and it uses controlled lighting and less water to produce nutritious, locally grown kale, lettuce, herbs and collard greens.

Discover how Broadview Federal Credit Union is transforming food security in Albany, NY through sustainable container farming!

Since 2018, Broadview has invested in four Freight Farms hydroponic container farms and donated three of them to local nonprofit organizations.

This initiative is helping fight food insecurity, provide hands-on farming education for kids, and improve community health outcomes. Learn how container farming makes fresh, healthy produce accessible year-round and supports local nonprofits in building a more sustainable future.

Fox Urban Farms, which grew produce at 1001 S. Loudoun St. using a hydroponic system inside two specially accessorized trailers, has closed due to what owners John and Ann Fox say was a disappointing lack of support from local shoppers.

"Last year, we really looked at it and it wasn't making the money it needed to make," John Fox said on Tuesday. "We didn't have the people that we needed to have, and some of that was due to market fit. Winchester is not a big foodie town."

But there is a silver lining. The Foxes sold the two hydroponic trailers — each valued at $150,000 and each capable of growing plants in nutrient-enriched water rather than soil — to Frederick County Public Schools.

Community Link is addressing this through a new project called ‘Fresh Link Farms,’ a hydroponic freight farm that’s able to grow lettuce, leafy greens, herbs, root vegetables and edible flowers in a 320-square-foot space, which will be next to the Azle Farmers Market, a press release said.

“It looks just like a shipping container, but inside it’s a hydroponic vertical farm, and it will grow at max capacity about 1,000 heads of lettuce a week,” Harper said. Vanessa Thompson, food program manager, said that some customers have been coming to the pantry since it opened 20 years ago.

The pantry gives a variety of what is on hand each day: frozen food, meat, eggs, produce, bread, hygiene products, and pantry items like coffee and pet food.