In the September 2019 issue of Greenhouse Management magazine Bill
Swanekamp, General Manager and President of Kube-Pak, shared in an
interview why, in his experience, Argus Controls is an exceptional
environmental control system that maintains precise readings of
temperature, lighting, humidity and other equipment in a greenhouse.
"You'll continue to grow because the quality of the crop is better," he says. "So it's the whole process that leads to increased profits, not just buying a computer system." This is exactly what has happened since Kube Pak, a plug and rooted cutting producer as well as finished grower, began working with Argus controls about 15 years ago.
The system provides a level of reliability and durability that, in Kub Pak's experience, is second to none, Swanekamp says.
It has just a different level of architecture in the manufacturing so that it is super durable under greenhouse conditions.
- Bill Swanekamp, General Manager, Kube Pak
“When you’re growing plugs and rooted cuttings, you need much stricter and tighter controls so that you can hit your target temperatures, your target cooling, your target light,” Swanekamp says. Argus Controls makes that achievable for Kube-Pak, while allowing the
operation to hone in on specific controls at any given time.
“We
have 11 sections,” Swanekamp says. “Each section has four zones, and
then each zone has two separate heating capabilities — floor heat and
overhead heat. So we can control every one of those independently.” Growers
can change their greenhouses’ controls using Argus Controls with any
PC, he says. While running Argus Controls software on a PC, Kube-Pak has
the company’s hardware distributed in boxes throughout the greenhouse.
Subject to extreme greenhouse conditions, the hardware provides lasting
durability. “At night, we have 100% relative humidity in the
greenhouse,” he says. At this level, electronics are likely to “get
corroded and fall apart.” But not Argus Controls. “It has just a
different level of architecture in the manufacturing so that it is super
durable under greenhouse conditions,” Swanekamp says.
Swanekamp commented on Argus Controls’ recently unveiled new
app called Argus Live - which gives growers the opportunity to manage their
environmental control system while away from a desktop computer.
Swanekamp previewed it at Cultivate’19.
“… [It] is going to run on a smartphone, and you get the ability to
check in and get feedback from what’s going on in the greenhouse right
over the internet,” Swanekamp says. “So that’s a very valuable tool.
They’re still progressing, they’re still doing new things, they’re not
just sitting on their laurels.”
