Japanese general contractor Obayashi Corp. has teamed up with one of Indonesia's largest conglomerates, Salim Group, to launch an agricultural project applying information technology on an Indonesian island, marking Obayashi's first foray into agricultural business overseas.

Obayashi and Salim Group's Singaporean investment arm, Gallant Venture Ltd., plan to begin supplying high-quality vegetables from the project as early as January 2021, and aim at producing 100 tons annually in the future, capitalizing on demand in Singapore and elsewhere, according to Obayashi.

Under a joint development agreement signed on Tuesday, Obayashi and PT Persada Hijau Cemerlang, an Indonesian firm owned by Salim Group and Gallant Venture, will build "Gallant Obayashi Green Agritech Park" on Bintan Island, located just across the Singapore Strait, according to a Gallant Venture statement released Tuesday.

They expect the greenhouse site to play a role as a tourist destination, and not only for production.

After planned completion later in 2020, they plan to expand the 1-hectare site to 2 to 10 hectares by 2023 and more than 500 hectares in the future.

Half of the site will be for closed-type greenhouses optimized for tropical climate, equipped with an environmental control system regulating temperature, humidity and light intensity to maximize production and reduce water usage to less than 10 percent of that for conventional open-type greenhouses.

The greenhouse will produce Japanese cherry tomatoes and kale. Products will be shipped to nearby areas, as vegetables require cold storage, including hotels in Bintan as well as Singapore and the southern Malaysian state of Johor.

"Bintan Island has a certain degree of infrastructure and is close to Singapore, a planned major export destination," Junya Noda, deputy general manager of the new business department at Obayashi, told NNA on Tuesday.

The Tokyo-based company set up an environmental protection plan in 2011 to promote renewable energy and other businesses compatible with conservation. It entered a full-fledged agricultural business in Japan in 2014 as part of the plan, supplying tomatoes from 2016. (NNA/Kyodo)

==Kyodo

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