INO Technology wins the 2024 Korea Innovation Award

INO Technology (CEO Kang Hee-seong) won the Innovation Grand Prize in the ‘Smart-Farm’ category at the Money Today ‘2024 Korea Innovation Awards’ held at the Press Center in Jung-gu, Seoul on the 25th with the new smart-farm system of the ‘INO.FarmteK’ brand.

INO Technology CEO Kang Hee-seong (right) is taking a commemorative photo with Money Today Executive Director Song Ki-yong (left) after winning the ‘2024 Korea Innovation Award’.

The Korea Innovation Awards is an event established to recognize and encourage the contributions of innovative companies that have contributed to the domestic economy and industrial development by selecting companies that have grown through technological and management innovation even in difficult economic conditions.

INO Technology is a factory automation company with over 20 years of history. In order to overcome the recent shrinkage of the automation market in the domestic manufacturing sector and the global economic downturn, INO Technology has expanded its market strategy to the 6th industrial sector, especially the rapidly expanding market. As a new idea to maximize the profitability of the ‘Smart Farm’ business, we developed and introduced to the market ‘Green Solar-Pole’, which implements artificial intelligence agriculture by integrating ‘farming solar power’ and ‘multi-stage vertical hydroponic cultivation’ methods. It’s getting an explosive response.

‘Green Solar-Pole’ uses UHMWPE cable, an eco-friendly polyethylene material, and utilizes the energy of a vertical solar power generation system implemented in a high-strength pipe that rotates while tracking the sun’s orbit without being fixed to any cable installed on the ground or in the air. It is a hybrid system of dozens of vertical multi-stage hydroponic plant growers grown using artificial intelligence.

This system product is placed at regular intervals to create a huge farm, expands existing two-dimensional farmland into a three-dimensional cultivation or aquaculture space, and dramatically increases the number of animals raised per single area. Additionally, the power produced from vertical tracked solar power systems can be used commercially, either stand-alone for agriculture or connected to the grid. Therefore, individual investment returns from existing smart farms or agricultural solar power can be maximized in a hybrid form, showing the true value of a ‘profitable smart-farm’ as a 6th industry.

Image of an open-air smart-farm consisting of several green solar-poles./Photo provided by INO Technology

In order to commercialize these technologies and products, INO Technology has established a farming-related corporation as a subsidiary. This company is FarmteK Co., Ltd., and it has developed vertical hydroponic cultivation technology and holds it as a patent. As it is a hybrid system created by combining the technologies of these two companies, INO.FarmteK was used as the brand.

Kang Hee-seong, CEO of INO.FarmteK Group, expressed his ambition, saying, “By developing artificial intelligence agricultural technology that makes money on its own, we will help smart-farm farmers using our system become the richest people in Korea.”

[저작권자 @머니투데이, 무단전재 및 재배포 금지]