Biolchim Spa

Biolchim Spa, founded in 1972 in Medicina, near Bologna, is a leading company in the production and marketing of high-tech fertilisers and in particular bio-stimulants, designed to maximise the productivity of any crop, at any stage of its growth and in any environment. Since 2014, the company has been at the head of a group, active in over 60 countries, to which Cifo, an Italian company specialising in fertilisers for DIY applications, the Canadian company West Coast Marine Bio Processing, specialising in macrocystis alga-based fertilisers, and Ilsa Spa, a manufacturer of bio-stimulants, organic and organic-mineral fertilisers, also belong. Biolchim is an experimental and scientific partner of C-LED, and its purpose is to carry out tests and develop high-tech bio-stimulants designed to work even more effectively in combination with LED lamps.

The goal of the research work carried out at Biolchim Spa’s labs by C-LED technicians is to rewrite the nutritional formulation of plants, starting from the scientific assumption that LED lights alter a plant’s ability to absorb nutrients. For their own development, plants will absorb most of the red component and of the blue component of sunlight. This has led, over time, to limit the composition of LED lighting for greenhouse growing applications to these two colours alone, effectively determining an imbalance. For this reason, C-LED and Biolchim have developed a technology that allows the fertigation formula to be rewritten – adapting it to the recipe of the LED light installed in the greenhouse.

A phytotron (a particular set of environments, greenhouses or climatic cells, kept under controlled temperature, humidity and lighting conditions in order to submit plants to studies and trials) has been installed at Biolchim – including 15 C-LED Indoor lamps suitable for plant factories and vertical farming systems, in which to collect scientific evidence. The project also includes the construction of a greenhouse, thanks to the partnership established with Idroterm Serre (a leading company in the field of indoor crop growing systems), in which plant prototypes will be planted to test other lamps and nutrients. This synergy will offer customers a final package including greenhouses, nutrients and lights, suitable for each individual need.