Key Takeaways:
- Lotte van Rijn, General Manager at Certhon, grew up in the Westland region of the Netherlands and has been immersed in the greenhouse industry since childhood.
- Her professional journey began in HR before transitioning into strategic leadership, focusing on talent development and aligning organizational growth with global agricultural needs.
- Certhon’s partnership with DENSO centers on developing robotics for greenhouse automation, starting with tomato harvesting and expanding into new cultivation models like movable “bonsai” plants.
- She sees convergence between greenhouse and vertical farming technologies, emphasizing that both systems address climate-specific needs and share common plant science principles.
- Van Rijn highlights the potential of functional food as a next step in controlled environment agriculture, calling for greater collaboration across sectors including plant science, breeding, and health.
Lotte van Rijn’s Foundation in the Westland Region
Lotte van Rijn, General Manager of Certhon, brings decades of experience rooted in the Netherlands’ greenhouse heartland. Raised in the village of Monster near The Hague, she grew up around greenhouses and agriculture, with Certhon itself being her family’s business. “In my school, most of the parents were growers,” she noted on the Vertical Farming Podcast. “It was the norm in our community.”
Despite this early exposure, van Rijn initially studied organizational and social sciences and didn’t expect to return to the family business. However, she found herself repeatedly drawn to greenhouse-related topics in her academic work, ultimately leading her back to the industry.
Strategic Growth and a People-First Approach
Van Rijn’s early role at Certhon focused on human resources, building internal education programs and helping define strategic workforce needs. “There is no school that teaches how to build or design a greenhouse,” she explained. “We had to create our own onboarding and knowledge-sharing programs.”
After a decade in HR, van Rijn moved into general management, overseeing Certhon’s global growth and innovation. Under her leadership, the company expanded operations to new markets in North America, Asia, and beyond, adapting greenhouse models for different climates and regulatory environments.
Certhon: Integrating Robotics Through a DENSO Partnership
A notable development during her tenure is Certhon’s collaboration with Japanese technology firm DENSO. Initially sparked by a project in Japan, the partnership evolved into a formal joint venture focused on automation.
“Our first project together was a greenhouse tailored for robotic research,” said van Rijn. “We combined their engineering expertise with our plant and greenhouse knowledge to develop robotic harvesting for tomatoes.”
That collaboration has since led to the Chronos cultivation system—a new approach using compact, movable plants for easier integration with automation. “Instead of bringing the robot to the plant, we’re working to bring the plant to the robot,” she explained.
Insights on Vertical Farming and System Design
Van Rijn is cautious about separating greenhouse and vertical farming into distinct categories. “For me, there’s no black and white—just different tools for different conditions,” she said. She emphasizes that the core principles—climate control, lighting, plant science—remain consistent across systems, and that many technologies can be adapted interchangeably.
She also pointed to industry challenges around labor, energy, and water use, noting that automation and controlled environments can address these constraints when carefully integrated.
Lotte van Rijn Looking Ahead: Functional Food and Global Collaboration
Certhon’s mission increasingly involves not just growing food efficiently, but growing the right food. “We’re now exploring functional foods—understanding what ingredients humans need and how to grow crops with those specific traits,” said van Rijn. This requires collaboration between technologists, plant breeders, and health professionals.
She also acknowledged the imbalance between Certhon’s relatively small size—150 employees—and the scale of the global food challenges they aim to address. Partnerships like the one with DENSO, she said, are critical to scaling their impact.
Van Rijn concluded with a message to the broader controlled environment agriculture community: “The questions we need to solve are too big to do alone. We need more collaboration. Small steps—like improving irrigation or data sharing—can make a big difference.”
