Harvesting through winter with LED lighting

Located in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia, and operating 3.0 hectares of greenhouse space, Den Haan Greenhouses is a family business that started in 1963 and continues to this day producing tomato and high-wire cucumbers for the Atlantic Canada market. Due to insufficient natural light levels during winter months, meeting year-round demands of Loblaws, Sobeys and Costco for locally grown fresh produce presented Den Haan with a challenge and an opportunity. Luke Den Haan, CEO, says one of his biggest challenges has been access to “cheap” power. High electricity prices, he says, made switching to LED lighting a no-brainer.

Maintaining the Den Haan standard of quality year-round, while keeping power expenditures at a reasonable amount, has always been the ambition since the company’s inception. Den Haan and his team began discussing the option of incorporating LEDs into their production strategy several years ago, but it wasn’t until a visit to The Netherlands that he began to see the true potential. On an overseas trade mission with the Nova Scotia Provincial Ministry of Agriculture, he visited Delphy, and it was there that he became aware of the possibilities of growing year-round with LED lighting. “Seeing the quality in the middle of the winter, it really opened my eyes to the possibilities of winter production with Philips technology,” he says.