{"id":6743,"date":"2025-06-13T15:21:26","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T13:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/portraits-de-la-communaute\/yasai-ag-tasty-locally-grown-herbs\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T15:30:22","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T13:30:22","slug":"yasai-ag-tasty-locally-grown-herbs","status":"publish","type":"portraits","link":"https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/en\/portraits-de-la-communaute\/yasai-ag-tasty-locally-grown-herbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Yasai AG &#8211; Tasty, locally grown herbs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Cultivating agricultural plants requires a lot of land, and the produce is often transported over long distances to the consumer. YASAI AG produces culinary herbs all year round in Switzerland, using significantly less land than traditional agriculture.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Context<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n<p>In 2010, US Professor of Public Health Dickson Despommier published the book <em>The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21<\/em><em><sup>st<\/sup><\/em> <em>Century<\/em>. In it, he developed the vision of an agricultural system that produces significantly more on a given amount of land than before. This basic idea inspired Mark E. Zahran<sup>,<\/sup> Stefano Augsburger and Philipp Bosshard to found YASAI AG ten years later. In 2024, the young company produced 20 tonnes of basil, Thai basil, mint and coriander in a hall in the Zurich municipality of Niederhasli. The cultivation area is just 1200 m<sup>2<\/sup>, with six levels of stacked plants.    <\/p>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Technology<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n<p>The herbs are grown in a hydroponic culture: the roots sit, not in soil, but in a nutrient solution. Because the water is reused, consumption can be reduced by 95% compared to conventional farming with irrigation systems. The plants get the energy they need to grow from LED lights powered by renewable electricity. The waste heat is used to heat the building and could also be used to supply a district heating network in a future facility. Compared to plants imported to Switzerland by plane, YASAI\u2019s herbs have half the CO2 footprint, as a life cycle analysis has shown.     <\/p>\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Maturity<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n<p>YASAI supplies Coop, Jelmoli and the online platform Farmy.ch, and will soon also be supplying Migros and the Swiss hospitality sector. The herbs are slightly more expensive than equivalent imported products, but they are pesticide free and produced locally all year round. In the first four years of its existence, the start-up has raised CHF 10 million in funding and grants. Since mid-2024, the company has been operating under the umbrella of GreenState AG, opening up new opportunities for growth. A plant with a cultivation area of 10,000 m<sup>2<\/sup> is to be built in the canton of Aargau by 2026. Talks are also underway for production facilities in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where vertical farming can develop its full potential to counteract scarce water resources and limited arable land.      <\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u2018<strong>Our herbs generate only about half as many greenhouse gas emissions as produce imported by plane.<\/strong>\u2019 Mark E. Zahran, CEO and founder of YASAI AG <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This portrait is taken from the 2nd Overview of cleantech start-ups published in 2024. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/en\/publications\/\">Read the full publication here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-id=\"6738\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-07-1-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6738\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-07-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-07-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-07-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-07-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-07-1.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" data-id=\"6736\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-06-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6736\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-06-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-06-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-06-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-06-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-06.jpg 1365w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" data-id=\"6740\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-04-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6740\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-04-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-04-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-04-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-04-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/YASAI-Farm-04.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cultivating agricultural plants requires a lot of land, and the produce is often transported over long distances to the consumer. YASAI AG produces culinary herbs all year round in Switzerland, using significantly less land than traditional agriculture. Context In 2010, US Professor of Public Health Dickson Despommier published the book The Vertical Farm: Feeding the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6735,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categorie-portrait":[96],"class_list":["post-6743","portraits","type-portraits","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","categorie-portrait-other"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Yasai AG - Tasty, locally grown herbs - CleantechAlps<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cleantech-alps.com\/en\/portraits-de-la-communaute\/yasai-ag-tasty-locally-grown-herbs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yasai AG - Tasty, locally grown herbs - CleantechAlps\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Cultivating agricultural plants requires a lot of land, and the produce is often transported over long distances to the consumer. YASAI AG produces culinary herbs all year round in Switzerland, using significantly less land than traditional agriculture. 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