La rentabilité et la situation financière des serres en toiture en Europe

Abstract

Over the years, rural landscapes are being transformed into urban landscapes. The European population keeps growing, enlarging the size of existing cities or even creating new ones. Humans need to feed themselves, and urbanization presents them with new challenges. Humans are more and more concerned about their environment and climate change. Therefore, he has a desire to feed himself locally with fresh products. In this context, urban agriculture was born. It allows city populations to eat fresh and local products. In addition to the local aspect of the product, urban agriculture brings benefits to the environment (reduction of the carbon footprint, air purification...) and is concerned with the ecological transition.

Among the many urban agriculture techniques developed, we find the rooftop greenhouses. These are placed on the roof of a building and act in synergy with it. They recover the CO2 lost by the building for the benefit of its crops. In the other direction, they bring an insulation which allows to reduce the energy consumptions. The greenhouses on the roof bring benefits to the humans and their environment. In addition, the roofs of large urban centers are rarely exploited, which represents a potential for potential investors.

However, rooftop greenhouses are innovative and energy consuming projects. They face many challenges. For example, the economic stakes are high because the investment of such a project is expensive. We can therefore ask what the financial situation of these greenhouses is. In Europe, is a rooftop greenhouse profitable?

The goal of this thesis is to review the strategies put in place, the costs incurred and the revenues generated by a rooftop greenhouse in order to determine its profitability. We will therefore compare the theories with the reality of the field. To do so, we submitted a questionnaire to 6 rooftop greenhouses from different European countries. As a result of this field survey, we observed that there are different types of greenhouses. We were able to verify our hypotheses based on our theory with a small sample.

We realize that the main strategy of the rooftop greenhouses is to be established in a short circuit, playing on the fact that the products sold are local and fresh. The main costs come from labor and the main income from the sale of perishable products.

Subsequently, we will perform a financial diagnostic of a rooftop greenhouse and an urban farm including a rooftop greenhouse, over the period of 2019 to 2021. The results of this analysis showed us that the rooftop greenhouse is not in a position to be profitable and generate profit for its shareholders. Instead, the farm's infrastructure generates profit for its shareholders. However, we do not know what impact the various ancillary activities of this urban farm may have on the profitability of the greenhouse.

Finally, before concluding our work, we will try to establish certain conditions for a roof-top greenhouse to be profitable. To do so, we have based our work on our field observations and our financial analysis of two practical cases.