VISHANNA PHAGOO
The Young Sing family is known for the mass manufacturing of fixtures for every room of people's homes and have been in that business since 1973.
Christian Young Sing – the grandson of Patrick Young Sing, owner and founder of Beta Homes and Patrick Young Sing and Co Ltd – has taken another route.
He has college diplomas in fisheries and aquaculture as well as business management completed at the Vancouver Island University, British Columbia and Conestoga College, Ontario, Canada, respectively.
He then ventured into food production and now provides restaurants and groceries with freshly grown, healthy and organic herbs. He sells his produce under the commercial name Crisp and offers herbs such as baby arugula, micro-greens, basil and mint.
Young Sing, 36, uses hydroponics to produce these herbs for mass production, but his company – Epilimnion Aquaculture Ltd in Cascade – was not launched to provide TT with these herbs. Before transforming his company to solely use the hydroponics system and produce herbs, he had a fish farm that used a re-circulating tank system to spawn tilapia.
After having consultations with the Institute of Marine Affairs on a feasibility study, he determined that a small aquaculture farm would not be successful.
"It was decided that there was more economic opportunity in the production of plant based crops than in the production of tilapia due to the limited demand in the local market for tilapia and the high capital and operational costs associated with running an aquaculture facility."
[caption id="attachment_969232" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Christian Young Sing inspects a bed of baby arugula plants at his company Epilimnion Aquaculture Ltd in Cascade - Photo by Sureash Cholai[/caption]
Young Sing kept the tilapia for a while and used their waste to fertilise plants, but this system was discarded six years ago due to a lack of space and the high cost to maintain it. Only in the last year was he able to build two climate control rooms to grow baby arugula and micro-greens.
The climate controls rooms are used to hydrate the plants with water that contains nutrients for the herbs. These rooms ensure the plants receive the required amount of care and so there is constant production. Upon entering the climate control room with baby arugula, the temperature is initially slightly cooler than outside, but after about ten minutes, the room becomes increasingly cold. The micro-greens climate control room though is left cold because they can only survive and flourish in a colder environment.
Both rooms are sealed off and the temperatures fluctuate between warm and cold with the help of timed heating, ventilation, air conditioning, dehumidification (HVAC-D) units. In addition to regulating the temperatures, the baby arugula and micro-greens are left under blue and red LED lights so the plants can photosynthesise throughout their life span.
"Our hydroponic systems are all re-circulating an
