The Pennsylvania indoor farm company Fifth Season plans to build a farm in Columbus.

The company, whose salads and other products can be found in some Kroger and Giant Eagle stores, has picked a site near John Glenn Columbus International Airport to build a 180,000-square-foot farm that will employ about 50 workers. The company did not identify the specific location.

This will be the company's second farm, following one in the Pittsburgh suburb of Braddock. The Columbus farm will be about three times the size of the Braddock operation.

Fifth Season said it hopes to open the Columbus farm next year.

Founded at Carnegie Mellon University in 2016, Fifth Season is heavily automated. The Columbus farm will include about 250 robots, compared with 100 in Braddock.

Fifth Season produces lettuces, spinach and other greens, along with packaged salads that combine greens with other ingredients. The company anticipates 600% sales growth of its packaged salads this year, requiring another facility.

“We’ve proven the viability of our model, and we’re pushing forward into high-growth mode with leaders who will use our scalable platform to innovate and increase distribution now, not five years from now,” Fifth Season’s CEO Austin Webb said in a news release.

Fifth Season is the second large vertical farm operation to plan a Columbus operation, following the announcement by the Florida company Kalera that it would build a 75,000-square-foot farm near Rickenbacker International Airport.

Vertical farms, which rely on artificial light and stack the produce on shelves (giving the industry its name) occupy a growing niche in the agricultural world. Several large farms already operate in Ohio, including four 80 Acres facilities in southwest Ohio, Buckeye Fresh in Medina and Vigeo Gardens in Akron.

Smaller farms can also be found in Columbus including Artisan Growers on the Near East Side and Indoor Acres Farm in the Eastmoor neighborhood.

jweiker@dispatch.com

@JimWeiker

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus getting salad greens vertical farm by Fifth Season