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A visitor suits up before entering Panasonic's vegetable farm. Photo: Reuters

Panasonic has growing ambitions as a vegetable supplier to Singapore

Japan's Panasonic Corp, best known for its televisions and home theatre systems, wants to feed Singaporeans its radishes and lettuce.

Japan's Panasonic Corp, best known for its televisions and home theatre systems, wants to feed Singaporeans its radishes and lettuce.

A unit of the electronics conglomerate has started selling to a chain of Japanese restaurants in Singapore fresh produce grown in what it says is the first licensed indoor vegetable farm in the island state.

The move ties Panasonic's deeper push into farming technology with land-scarce Singapore's ambition to reduce its near-total reliance on food imports.

"We foresee agriculture to be a potential growth portfolio, given the global shortage of arable land, climate change and increasing demand for quality food as well as stable food supply," said Hideki Baba, the managing director of Panasonic Factory Solutions Asia Pacific.

The facility, which has a small production capacity of 3.6 tonnes annually, produces 10 types of vegetables such as mini red radishes and baby spinach.

Indoor farming has found favour with other Japanese technology firms as well. Fujitsu is growing lettuce at its Fukushima province plant, while Sharp Corp is testing growing strawberries indoors in Dubai.

In Singapore, Panasonic's 248 sqmetre farm is inside a factory building on the outskirts of the city, where standard fluorescent lighting gives way to a pinkish-purple glow from LED lights brought in to nurture the plants. The company aims to grow more than 30 crop varieties by March 2017 and account for about 5 per cent of local vegetable production. It said the vegetables grown at its facility could be half the price of those flown in from Japan.

Singapore produced nearly 22,000 tonnes of vegetables last year, according to the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority. Last year, it imported 514,574 tonnes of vegetables.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Panasonic grows food ambition
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