NEWS RELEASE
For more information:
Contact: Mr. Yoshifumi Okai, Ms. Minako Ando
Public Relations Department, Spread Co., Ltd.
info@earthside.com
Contact: Ms. Naoko Kodama
Global Business Team, NTT COMWARE
nwglobal@nttcom.co.jp

Spread and NTT COMWARE Partner to co-Develop DevOps
IT platform for Techno Farm™, Next-generation Indoor
Vertical Farming~Creating an IoT platform for the world’s largest automated indoor vertical farm~

October 16, 2018, Tokyo/Kyoto - Spread Co., Ltd. (HQ: Kyoto, Japan; CEO: Shinji
Inada; hereinafter, Spread) and NTT COMWARE CORPORATION (Head office:Tokyo, Japan; President: Satoshi Kurishima, hereinafter, NTT COMWARE) haveentered into a contract for the co-development of an IT management platform forTechno Farm™ - Spread’s award-winning, next-generation, indoor, vertical farm.
This cloud-based platform allows Spread to store and manage data from cultivation
processes within Techno Farm™ into its database. With its DevOps and Agile
approach, NTT COMWARE will accelerate Spread’s digital operations and tosupport its business on a global scale.
Expectations for indoor vertical farming are ever-rising to maintain a sustainable
society amidst growing concerns for food security due to population growth,environmental contamination, climate change and shortage of arable land. Spread,
who has been successfully operating a fully enclosed indoor vertical farm using
artificial lights in Kyoto since 2007, is the leading company for indoor verticalfarming. Techno Farm™, a Gold medal winner of the 2016 Edison Award, isSpread’s upcoming project, which will be an indoor vertical farm capable ofproducing 30,000 heads of lettuce a day. To sustainably achieve global food security
for future generations, Spread will bring Techno Farm ™ to the world by working
with local partners in several international markets.
Meanwhile, NTT COMWARE has been shaping Japanese society by providing asafe and secure ICT infrastructure as experts within the NTT Group while operating
24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Today with its accumulated technology, experience,and quality, NTT COMWARE endeavors to collaborate with partners from a varietyof fields to create new values through ICT.
more…

“Techno Farm™ is a next generation food production system created by Spreadthat implements automation replacing several elements of production from seeding
to shipment that were previously hands-on processes. This system aims to be
implemented anywhere, by anyone in the world. To achieve this requires
technologies such as automation, IoT/AI” says Shinji Inada, Spread’s CEO. The
role of NTT COMWARE here is to provide an IT management platform for Techno
Farm™ where cultivation data, with its related environmental parameters collectedby IoT sensors, is stored and utilized as Big Data. This platform is set to advancethe digital operations and the overall production quality of Techno Farm™.

Techno Farm™ concept imageSpread and NTT COMWARE entered into a contract to address digitaltransformation while sharing goals and directions from a long-term perspective.
The decision is based on a mutual understanding for the necessity of continuous
innovation due to day-to-day technological progresses and the big data-driven
advancement of cultivation technologies as vertical indoor farming industry
grows.
Techno Farm™ is Spread’s next generation food production system, which
incorporates the latest innovations such as automated cultivation, water recycling
and environmental control technology, specialized LED lighting and IoT/AItechnology. To introduce an IT platform to Techno Farm™, it was required todevelop a bespoke system as existing platform cannot be used because of theuniqueness of workflows and data items from Spread accumulated through yearsof manual operation. The system features include:more…

 IT based simple administration: Leaving manual tasks behind, an IT based
simple operation will drive Spread’s multi-site partnerships.
 Detect & solve problems: By analyzing environment and production datawith its related environmental parameters collected by sensors, it will bepossible to detect and solve problems within the operating sites quickly.
 Cloud-based central management: By collecting data from each operatingsite into cloud, Spread will be able to see the production status and its relatedparameters of all operating sites.
Through the platform, Spread provides production management features to each
operating site and collects environment and growth data with related environmental
parameters to the cloud via IoT sensors and tablet inputs. Spread will be able to not
only identify the production status of each operating site, but also to find out thebest growth conditions based on AI analysis of those collected data.
NTT COMWARE adopted DevOps and Agile software development, and it makes
possible to respond to the needs of each site flexibly and to adopt newly available
technologies from the market.
Starting with Techno Farm Keihanna (scheduled to open in Autumn 2018),
Spread will introduce the platform to accelerate both domestic andinternational businesses. As a co-development partner of Spread, NTT
COMWARE endeavors to maximize value by following a B2B2X model
presented by the NTT Group. Spread and NTT COMWARE will continue topromote innovations by adopting advanced technologies such as IoT/AI for
Techno Farm™’s further advancement.

Techno Farm™ to the world

more…

Note to Editors
Techno Farm™ is a next generation food production system created by Spreadbased on their 10 years of operating experience and technological innovation invertical farming. Joint development with Japanese technology companies forinnovations such as automated cultivation, water recycling and environmental
control technologies, specialized LED lighting, and IoT/AI will reduce
environmental burden and operational costs. NTT COMWARE supports a wide
range of IT aspects.

* “Techno Farm” is a trademark of Spread Co., Ltd.
* “Edison Awards” is a trademark of AF Networks LLC.
* All company names, product names and service names mentioned are trademarks or registeredtrademarks of the respective companies.

##

#

#

#

#