Our Story
Yarra Valley Herbs owners, Matt Blom and Dennis van der Knaap, share a passion for Innovation & Sustainable Farming.
With many years of horticulture experience, Matt & Dennis teamed up to develop an innovative & sustainable urban farming system. They successfully created an innovative and cost-effective urban grow system that allows them to produce the highest-quality fresh produce with minimal environmental footprint consistently.
GROW INNOVATION
Our controlled grow environments permit reliable & high-quality supply year-round.
High Quality
We utilise the latest state-of-the-art grow practices to ensure high-quality crop yields.
LOW WATER CONSUMPTION
Our innovative farming techniques use far less water than traditional farming.
OUR STORY
Yarra Valley Herbs was Founded By Two Passionate and Experienced Growers Dedicated to Innovative And sustainable Farming
Yarra Valley Herbs was founded by two experienced horticultural experts who share a passion for growing, sustainability and innovation. With years of horticulture experience between them, Matt Blom and Dennis van der Knaap teamed up to explore new opportunities for an innovative and sustainable future of farming in Australia.
Matt has worked in the local cut flower industry for more than twenty years, a vibrant sector until Australia opened its borders to import cut flowers. It was a disaster for our local flower growers, many of whom had to close their doors and look for new opportunities. As a result, it was not difficult to find a vacant cool room. In that context, the boom of vertical farming and the advances in LED grow lights led us to start our urban farm.
Being growers for most of our lives, creating an optimum climate for plant growth was not a problem. Our challenge was to find a system that fitted well into our existing cool rooms. Available existing urban farming systems were expensive and rigid in configuration. We couldn’t expect a viable return on fresh produce to cover the investment cost. Other urban farming systems were rudimental and impossible to scale up. We needed something that would be cost-efficient, scalable and with the option of future automation.
After three years of experimenting with different types of LED grow lights and small-scale growing systems, Yarra Valley Herbs started selling its first fresh produce in 2018, our Mix of Six Micro Salads! Our Mix of Six Micro Salad is produced without pesticides or herbicides and is grown sustainably. We have fitted an extensive array of solar panels that exceed our daily requirements. It became a success and customers’ favourite.
We are humbled by the journey and the learning experiences we have had so far. We are excited that the urban farming system we engineered and built ourselves is capable of cultivating high volumes of fresh and high-quality microgreen salads.
However, this is only the beginning. Over the next few years, our vision is to refine our automation systems further and introduce new product lines. Follow our journey on social media to keep up-to-date.
