Sollum’s LED grow light solution is designed to recreate natural sunlight.
The Montreal company Sollum obtained a $2.5 million grant from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) for its second phase of financing with the government agency.
The cleantech company Sollum was created by François Roy-Moisan, Gabriel Dupras and Jacques Poirier in 2014 while they were students at the École de technologie supérieure in Montreal. There they assembled a lighting system designed for paint restoration that recreates the lighting environment at the time the part was painted so that its appearance is as close to the original coloring as possible.
Sollum has already received $5.25 million from SDTC and $3.15 million from the Government of Quebec through Technoclimat in 2020.
Sollum’s LED grow light solution is designed to recreate natural sunlight. Its Sun-as-a-Service cloud platform enables multi-zone light management so growers can grow different types of food in the same greenhouse. The platform also automatically adapts the lighting of each zone to the ambient light to match the objectives of the recipe.
In 2015, Sollum was incorporated. A year later, the company joined the Centech incubator and appointed Louis Brun as CEO. Solemn is currently headquartered in Montreal, where its design, development and manufacturing activities are concentrated.
Using its new $2.5 million capital, Sollum intends to launch a $14 million demonstration project to showcase Sollum’s lighting solution for the benefits of generating greenhouse tomatoes with partners SAVOURA Group, Prism Farms and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Harrow Research and Development Center (Harrow RDC).
Each of the greenhouse operating partners will demonstrate dynamic lighting over one hectare of grow space while Harrow RDC will expand its collection of Sollum fixtures for research in addition to what it implemented during the phase one of SDTC funding.
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Sollum has already received $5.25 million from SDTC and $3.15 million from the Government of Quebec through Technoclimat in 2020 to start testing its smart LED grow light solution for the production of peppers from greenhouse. The company has also received $50,000 in funding from the federal government as part of a cumulative investment of C$13 million that has been invested in 30 projects by Quebec entrepreneurs that aim to reduce pollution, build healthy communities and create jobs.
Featured image by Zoe Schaeffer via Unsplash
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