About Us
At PlanetPartners we want to do our bit to partner with our planet in a sustainable way. Our initial focus has been on hydroponics.
Our story began in Singapore in 2017 when Stephanie, one of our founders and talented home chef, convinced William, her husband and co-founder, to join a hydroponic workshop hosted by Thorben and Nadine from Aerospring Hydroponics.
Aerospring Hydroponics had developed a compact patented vertical hydroponic system for an urban environment that would automatically water and fertilise the plants. It was impossible for Stephanie to leave the workshop that day without getting involved.
Stephanie has been feeding our family of five daily since then with fresh, quality and safe produce.
When the family moved to South Africa we decided to work with Aerospring Hydroponics to introduce their system here. While there are different challenges and reasons for owning a hydroponic system in Singapore and South Africa, the basic need remains – to create a sustainable safe food source at home.
The additional benefit is that it is very cost effective with payback periods ranging from 5 to 11 months depending on the unit and mix of food grown in the system. As an example, using a 27 plant indoor unit planted entirely with Kale the payback would be just under 11 months until the system has paid for itself*. Another example would be for a family spending R2000 a month on fresh produce that could be grown using hydroponics, the payback period could be between 7-12 months. Based on current food inflation these payback periods are only likely to reduce.
We are of the same view as Thorben and Nadine regarding the challenges of food safety, security and sustainability and that there is an increasing need to grow our food closer to home.
We all need to start thinking about how and where our food comes from. Our very young children have learnt from an early age about various foods and understand that food is not simply something that comes wrapped in plastic from a shop but that it initially needs to be grown and taken care of by someone. They are connected to their food, get excited when that first strawberry starts to present itself and have learnt to wait while it grows before picking it and enjoying the fresh safe harvest right in our own home.
Hydroponics in South Africa
Based on our own research of available retail prices in South Africa, input from our supplier and yields from the system over a 5 year period of home use. It is not a guarantee of savings as there are numerous factors that can influence yield and payback such as mix of plants grown, a families typical food consumption (eg root vegetables cannot be included), water quality /nutrients, sunlight and others. Example: a single kale plant harvests around 1200g of kale after 9 weeks from a 20c seed or 6 weeks from a R25 seedling. Based on the seed, that’s 32,400g of kale per harvest (1200×27 cups) and multiplied by 5.8 annual harvests (52 weeks /9) its 187,200grams. At R26 for 180g at a leading retailer that equates to R27,040 worth of Kale annually. Based on using the seedling the yield is 50% more since you are able to harvest 8.7 times a year (52/6) and payback is 25% quicker.
