One of their plant factories in Anxi, Fujian province, covers 1 ha and supposedly is the largest vertical farming complex in the world. By inventing energy efficient LEDs and recyclable hydroponic solutions, as well as new energy-conserving methods the factory’s overall energy consumption was cut by 25 percent compared with a first facility. San’an Sino-Science was founded in 2015 by the San’an Group and the CAS Institute of Botany. The second-generation plant in Anxi can produce 1.5 tons of vegetables a day, such as lettuce and cabbage. It takes about 20 days for a sapling to reach maturity in the plant factory, but 40 to 60 days in a conventional farm. China has 160 million hectares of farmland dedicated to growing vegetables. To grow them, farmers use more than 311,000 metric tons of pesticide and 59 million tons of fertilizer a year.
CAS news release, May 9, 2017