Hans Hassle may not have had the most conventional training for his role as CEO of Swedish urban farming technology company Plantagon, but there is no doubt he is the most qualified person for the job. His previous experience as a brand strategist and author of extensive research on corporate social responsibility effectively prepared Hassle for the role of CEO in a company as revolutionary and daring as Plantagon.
The 53-year-old started his career not as a businessman but as a travel journalist. Hassle spent his early twenties travelling the world and writing about the indigenous people of Indonesia, Tibet and New Zealand. He went so far as to live with the Siberut tribe in Indonesia for several months in 1986.
He also clandestinely photographed a Tibetan air funeral, a sacred and secretive ceremony. The story, published by Swedish Sunday magazine Aftonbladet, turned out to be his last as a journalist, but Hassle’s affinity with indigenous people influenced his life many years later.
Tibet to Onondaga
Plantagon was developed as a partnership with the indigenous Onondaga Nation in North America. The Onondaga population, unlike many other Native American tribes, is against gambling and casinos, and was looking for a sustainable and ethical alternative means of generating revenue. Before the partnership with Hassle took off in the early 2000s, the nation was surviving on the sale of tax-free tobacco products at its reservation. Plantagon is the result of that partnership and is owned by the Onondaga nation in partnership with Sweco, a Swedish engineering group.
Hassle brought into the mix his expertise as a brand developer. After quitting his journalism career and a brief stint as an educator, Hassle founded the Vision and Reality Communications Company in Stockholm. Hassle certainly has a flair for marketing; in 1989 he brought the concept of ‘event marketing’ to Sweden. A direct and targeted form of advertisement, event marketing aims at making quality individual impressions on specific types of consumers. Hassle first applied event marketing techniques to a 1989 Procter & Gamble campaign for the fabric conditioner Ariel, where he used the round exterior of Stockholm’s famous Globe Arenas as the vehicle for the ad campaign.
From development to sustainability
During his 15 years as CEO at Vision and Reality, Hassle developed several management tools for brand development. In particular he was the first person to involve behavioural scientists and psychologists in the process of brand development. He specialised in value-based organisational development and brand strategy. These are invaluable tools for a CEO in Hassle’s position. The company profile is its most valuable asset when attracting investors. Plantagon is still in its infancy, and its prototype greenhouses are being built this year, so for now the company’s branding is everything. So far, Hassle’s marketing strategies have raised over $200m in investments.
It is a company for the future. It banks on the notion that it will soon be too costly to transport enough food for growing urban populations, and proposes an alternative: to grow the food in the cities. Hassle and his engineer partners at Sweco have designed enormous biodome-like greenhouses, 25 storeys tall and featuring rotating spirals of crops in the centre. Each greenhouse has the potential to grow enough food for over 10,000 people in a year. It is an ambitious project, and not without problems. The rotating spirals, designed to ensure all crops get sufficient sunlight, are powered by a diesel engine; an odd choice for a project based on sustainable development ideas. It is also not a particularly economical choice, as energy costs continue to rise. But the greenhouses are still being developed and Hassle is confident that the maths will add up; the greenhouse will consume a lot less fuel then the planes, lorries and ships that currently ferry food around the world.
For the future
Since its conception in 2008, Plantagon has been awarded seven major sustainability and innovation prizes, including the top accolade at the 2009 Globe Forum, and in 2012 Hassle himself was named ‘CEO of the Year’ for Sweden by European CEO. Plantagon is what Hassle likes to call a ‘Companisation’ a hybrid between a profit-seeking company and the sustainable perspective of a not-for-profit organisation. According to its charter ‘equity, ethics and sharing’ are the three major principles of the business. The ‘companisation’ is Hassle’s brainchild; he was working with CSR long before the term became a buzzword in the business community. Plantagon epitomises the idea that a company can be financially viable while embracing corporate citizenship.
“We want to run a good business and we want to open up that business, to make it more transparent and more democratically run than other companies,” Hassle says about Plantagon. “We think it is essential to change the perspective on why we do business; instead of being run by greed, it should be run by responsibilities.”
Hassle chronicled his ideas in a book, Business as Usual is Over, describing companisation as a “business guided simultaneously by two objectives: the commercial and the non-profit. The aim is to equate the two drivers with one another, benefit from the knowledge base and achieve a balance between them. The goal is a more efficient organisation that understands the conditions and has the knowledge to act with both perspectives simultaneously.”
In February Plantagon broke ground in its first Swedish urban farming greenhouse. It is 142m tall and could cost over $280m to build. Plantagon estimates that it would cost a further $7.5m to operate the greenhouse per year. According to calculations, simply by planting lettuce there is the possibility of $92.6m in revenues annually. Hassle is adamant that this is a long-term project, spanning over 40 years. This is part of his business philosophy: long-term investment for a sustainable development. A truly green undertaking, he is confident that the project is not only viable, but also desirable, for investors. “There is so much money around when it comes to green things,” he said. “Cities all over the world want a green image. The investors see this as a good business opportunity.”
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