Behind the screens with Paul Arena
For the Svensson series, Behind the Screens, meet Svensson Climate Consultant, Paul Arena, who fell in love with growing while spending time on a family farm as a boy.
“We’d run along the fence checking for holes, getting water for the goats, bringing in hay, gathering fruit,” he recalls.
On his recent visit to Sweden, fall was coming in, and he reflected on the similarities between the so-called “textile kingdom” of west Sweden, where Svensson was founded in the late 1800s, and the cold climate growers he visits.
“I love seeing greenhouse operations,” he said. “The possibility to feed an entire region in an area that’s naturally not made for that – I really, really enjoy seeing something like that be possible.”
While driving around the region, he saw weaving museums, textile mills, and the sense of a living tradition in the region.
”Growers need to provide food for customers in cold climates, like Sweden or the Netherlands,” he says.
“Fifty years ago, the company made this commitment to horticulture, but they were already experts at knitting and weaving curtains,” he says.
On his recent visit to Sweden, fall was coming in, and he reflected on the similarities between the so-called “textile kingdom” of west Sweden, where Svensson was founded in the late 1800s, and the cold climate growers he visits.
“I love seeing greenhouse operations,” says Paul Arena. “The possibility to feed an entire region in an area that’s naturally not made for that – I really, really enjoy seeing something like that be possible.”
“I love seeing greenhouse operations,” he said. “The possibility to feed an entire region in an area that’s naturally not made for that – I really, really enjoy seeing something like that be possible.”
While driving around the region, he saw weaving museums, textile mills, and the sense of a living tradition in the region.
”Growers need to provide food for customers in cold climates, like Sweden or the Netherlands,” he says.
At the hotel in Sweden near the company office, Paul couldn't resist walking into the kitchen garden that provides fresh produce
“Fifty years ago, the company made this commitment to horticulture, but they were already experts at knitting and weaving curtains,” he says.
“Then came the precision polymer science, the tight links with horticulture, and the ability to work with microscopic filaments on a knitting machine with 1100-1500 needles,” he adds.
And gradually, through that combination, came the key insights, he says.
“Imagine you live somewhere very cold and it’s a struggle to keep the house warm, so you close the curtains to keep in the heat,” he says.
“If you’re a plant in a cold-climate glass house, yes you want to be kept warm, but you can’t cope with darkness,” says Paul. “It was for this reason Svensson developed a greenhouse curtain with an extraordinary ability to keep warmth inside, but which can still let in and spread more growing light than any textile the world had seen. It’s quite a thing!”
