Far from the greenhouse epicentre of Leamington, Ontario, a new automated five-acre facility is harvesting and packaging baby greens nine hours each day, seven days a week. It’s a personal vision come true for Jay Willmot.

Growing up on Kinghaven Farms, King City, Ontario, Willmot was family to Canadian horseracing royalty. From this background, patience and not making foolish, uneducated bets became part of his DNA. After a successful legal career providing counsel to various renewable energy and agribusiness clients, Willmot decided it was time to take the family farm in a new direction. 

His aim was nothing short of a state-of-the-art, environmentally sustainable greenhouse. And he hit the mark in February 2025 with the launch of Haven Greens, a facility less than an hour’s drive north of Toronto. With ready access to millions of consumers and a full-time staff of just 40 people, the greenhouse is today offering Baby Green Lettuce, Baby Red and Green Leaf and Baby Spring Mix. They are currently marketed through three major retailers -- Metro, Sobeys, and Giant Tiger – along with a host of smaller independent retailers. Unsurprisingly, given the three-day shelf life of competitive product shipped by truck from California, the food service industry has quickly pivoted to Haven Green’s boxed three-pound bags, which represent the bulk of the company’s current sales.

Global technology

Willmot credits Finland-headquartered Green Automation’s mobile gutter system that maximizes space, eliminates manual transplanting, and improves input cost efficiency for Haven Greens’ lightning-speed launch success. The innovative growing system guides 17-foot gutters through the entire growing process, from seeding to harvesting and mixing, then back to seeding in continuous 25-day cycles. The greenhouse uses integrated AI-controlled lighting, irrigation, and nutrient management to maintain an optimal, hands-free growing environment.

Patrik Borenius, CEO Americas for Green Automation, predicts major adoption of this system for eastern Canada. He says, “I think with Ontario’s greenhouse experience and Québec’s inexpensive power, there will be a new epicentre of lettuce growing.”

A case in point is Vegpro International, a producer of field vegetables in Sherrington, Québec who launched its Green Automation facility of 12.8 acres in April 2025. Respected for its field-grown lettuce under the “Attitude” brand, it’s now marketing hydroponic teen-leaf lettuce under the “Folia” brand.  

The Green Automation system is optimized for lettuce, herbs, and other leafy greens with short growing cycles, explains Borenius and to date, is not relevant for tomatoes and other vine crops. Looking ahead, he anticipates the seed companies will work on the potential for regrowth and have multiple cuts of leafy greens.  

Global operational experts 

Early on, Willmot worked closely with experts in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) to achieve a cost-efficient start-up of a complex system that integrates water management, nutrition, and environmental controls into a seamless production greenhouse.  Given such a small pool of available expertise in this type of CEA, it’s no surprise that Willmot would bring Green Automation consultant Eric Highfield on board as Haven Greens’ chief agricultural officer.

Highfield, a Master of Science graduate of the University of Arizona’s CEA degree, with extensive experience working with Green Automation startups in Europe and the U.S., provided invaluable counsel as Willmot worked at turning hisdream into a business.  

“If this was easier, more people would do it,” Highfield laughs.

To optimize the Green Automation, he points to three technical solutions critical to supporting high quality product.

First, climate control is essential. Unlike other vegetable greenhouses, hot, humid conditions are anathema for a cool-season crop such as lettuce. Mechanical cooling of water is required to maintain the peat-based soil mix at 21.5° to 22° Celsius so lettuce seeds will germinate. Haven Greens’ seeds are sourced from companies such as Nunhems, Enza Zaden and Rijk Zwann which specialize in crystal-type leaf lettuce. These crispy greens are characterized by frilly, crunchy leaves with a high leaf count, and require relative humidity at between 70 and 80 per cent throughout their 25-day growth cycle.

Second, the water quality must be pristine. Haven Greens’ recirculation systems are constantly monitored to guarantee there are no root pathogens present to infect seedlings, and irrigation water temperature is chilled to 18°C. Dissolved oxygen levels are regularly monitored, with leachate analysis done weekly. 

“You have to keep on top of water chemistry to optimize yields,” explains Highfield. “We have a kill step with ultraviolet (UV) light that disinfects water by inactivating bacteria and viruses.” Adequate access to clean water is assured through several sources:  an on-farm well, a stormwater retention pond, and a roof rainwater collection system. 

Third, the packaging line must be fast and reliable because 100 four-ounce containers need to be filled every minute. “It’s a perpetual movement machine,” says Highfield. “One gutter moves every 20 seconds, so even a momentary lapse causes disruption.”

At seeding, the RFID tag labeling each gutter creates a record of the time and date of seeding, the variety, the number of seeds per gutter, the seed lot, and the peat lot. “This represents unparalleled access to data,” says Highfield. When the final product comes to be packaged, that RFID data is accessed and analyzed. 

National aspirations 

“By building the first fully automated greenhouse in the country, we’re redefining how leafy greens are grown in Ontario and beyond,” says Willmot. “Our AI-driven systems enhance productivity, reduce energy use, and lower emissions, setting a new standard for indoor agriculture.”

Timing has been on his side. The launch follows high-profile recalls of contaminated U.S. field lettuce and increasing worries about the sustainability of transporting high-water-content lettuce from Arizona and California to central Canada. Plus, the recent 2025 U.S. trade war has inspired Canadian consumers to search for Canadian-grown produce alternatives.

Like all good entrepreneurs, Willmot is always scouting for new insight. He recently attended a food show in California, where he engaged with competitors about the lettuce category moving forward. It has started to segment into three categories, conventional, organic, and now “clean,” which is defined as no-chlorine, no-pesticide, no-hands lettuce.

Willmot points to Little Leaf Farms, with operations in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, as a proof point for the category’s growth potential. Since 2015, Little Leaf has captured 54 per cent of the “clean lettuce” target market. Recent statistics show that six per cent of all lettuce grown in the U.S. is now grown indoors.

He references their case study as “a true commodity changing into a Consumer Packaged Good (CPG) product.” Retailers like CPGs due to branded packaging, convenient handling, long shelf life, and just-in-time inventory management. 

Back on the farm, the bulldozers are rumbling to lay the foundation for Haven Greens 2.0, designed as a mirror image of phase one but with more area in the “production corridor.” This will provide space for water management, seeding and gutter cleaning/repotting operations and packaging storage. By 2027, Haven Greens intends to be net-zero in greenhouse gas emissions by activating renewable energy infrastructure being constructed as part of the second phase. 

“There is circularity in everything we do here,” states Willmot.

Although still in its early stages, this eco-conscious, Ontario business is a Greenbelt story that has politicians and the public at large on the same page.