Field Case: 10 Hectare Glass Greenhouse Tomato Cultivation Project in Mongolia

The client of this project is not an individual grower, but a national-level protected agriculture demonstration project led by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Light Industry of Mongolia. Mongolia is an inland country featuring long, frigid winters; extreme low temperatures near Ulaanbaatar can drop to -40°C. Summers are short with vast diurnal temperature swings exceeding 20°C. The open-field growing window only lasts three to four months per year. For a long time, fresh vegetables including tomatoes and cucumbers consumed by Mongolian residents have relied heavily on imports from China and Russia. Imported produce carries high prices with inconsistent quality, and supply shortages frequently occur in winter.

In 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture of Mongolia launched the Domestic Vegetable Supply Security Program. Its core goal was to construct a modern glass greenhouse with large-scale, year-round production capacity within Mongolia, so as to fundamentally ease reliance on imported vegetables. After multiple rounds of international bidding and scheme evaluation, our glass greenhouse proposal earned the highest marks from the review committee in three dimensions: structural safety, thermal insulation performance and year-round production feasibility. The contract was formally signed in March 2025, and the project site is situated on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar.

A 10 hectare glass greenhouse project has landed in Mongolia, and the challenge is multidimensional. From the moment we signed the contract, we knew that none of these challenges could be solved by a 'standard process':

● Government Qualification Approval: A Months-long Cross-border Compliance Campaign

This is a national demonstration project administered by the Ministry of Agriculture of Mongolia. All participating entities must hold qualifications recognized by local authorities. The application process proved far more complicated than expected. First, we needed to submit corporate qualification documents to the Mongolian Ministry of Construction, including overseas engineering contracting qualification filed with China's Ministry of Commerce, ISO 9001 certification, and documents proving that the greenhouse structural design complies with European standard EN 13031-1. All materials required translation into Mongolian and dual authentication by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mongolian Consulate in China. Second, the structure had to pass safety review by the Ulaanbaatar local quality supervision bureau. External reviewers raised detailed technical inquiries regarding the brittle performance of steel materials used in the Venlo glass greenhouse under -40°C low temperatures. We submitted three rounds of supplementary technical statements. Most critically, we needed to secure a local construction permit. The approval window coincided with government personnel reshuffles following the Mongolian Great Khural election, causing a temporary suspension of reviews. We closely tracked progress via our local partner in Mongolia and actively supplemented supporting documents. It took nearly five months from initial submission to receiving the full set of compliance permits.

● Large-scale Installation Execution Under Extreme Climate Conditions

The 10-hectare glass greenhouse consumes over 2,000 tons of steel for the main frame, with a glass coverage area exceeding 80,000 m². In Ulaanbaatar, the construction window only runs from April to October annually. Outdoor concrete pouring becomes impossible once winter arrives, and glass sealant cannot cure properly under sub-zero temperatures. As a result, the actual construction timeline for the entire project was compressed into just seven months. An additional challenge: no local Mongolian crews had experience installing glass greenhouses of this scale. Most available laborers are accustomed to residential building and industrial steel workshop construction. They lacked expertise in specialized Venlo greenhouse works, including aluminum profile gutter assembly, glass groove sealing systems and precision installation of top window transmission mechanisms.

● Rigorous Reliability Requirements for Year-round Operation

The core purpose of this project is to supply Mongolian residents with locally grown fresh tomatoes even in harsh winter. If any malfunction occurs within the greenhouse heating or thermal insulation systems, even several hours of downtime will expose all tomato crops to an outdoor temperature of -40°C, which can freeze the whole crop rapidly. While this would merely amount to a seasonal harvest loss for ordinary commercial projects, such an incident would become an engineering accident with international influence for this national demonstration project. The full environmental control system — covering coal-fired boilers, hot water circulation pipelines, internal thermal screen systems and emergency backup generators — must feature absolute redundancy and reliability, leaving zero margin for trial and error.

Faced with the triple pressure from the Mongolian government, extreme climate, and engineering scale, our solution revolves around the sequence of "obtaining qualifications first, controlling the construction period, and finally ensuring the system":

● Joint Efforts by Professional Legal and Technical Teams to Advance Qualification Approval

We retained a local law firm in Ulaanbaatar that provides long-term consultancy for Chinese enterprises investing in Mongolia. The firm was tasked with tracking and pushing forward every approval procedure. The biggest technical barrier during review came from inquiries raised by the Mongolian Quality Supervision Bureau regarding the impact toughness of Q355 low-alloy structural steel at -40°C. Previously, reviewers were mainly familiar with Russian GOST steel standards and had no evaluation basis for China's GB/T 1591 standard. Our structural engineers compiled trilingual Chinese-English-Mongolian technical documentation. Charpy V-notch impact energy test data of Q355 steel under -40°C was listed, and material performance parameters were compared item by item against equivalent steel grades within the GOST system. Only two weeks after submission, the structural safety review was officially approved. From initial application to obtaining all permits — overseas contractor filing with the Mongolian Ministry of Construction, structural safety approval from the Ulaanbaatar Quality Supervision Bureau and the local construction permit — we accompanied the client through the whole five-month procedure.

● Large-scale Pre-winter Rush Construction and Cross-border On-site Professional Installation Crew

We dispatched a core management team including one project manager and four foremen to arrive in Mongolia two months ahead of schedule. Around 200 auxiliary workers were recruited locally in Ulaanbaatar, who received shift-based training led by our foremen. This working model — core team setting technical standards, local labor undertaking specific operations — not only addressed the lack of local skilled crews for glass greenhouse installation, but also avoided heavy visa and logistics costs that would be incurred if we transferred all laborers from China. During glass installation, our foremen provided hands-on demonstrations for embedding sealing strips into aluminum profile grooves. The sealing gaskets must not be stretched during fitting; overstretching will trigger shrinkage and cracking in winter after rebound. Slope measurements at gutter joints were cross-checked with spirit levels. Travel limits for top window motor push rods were designed with safety redundancy according to the maximum winter snow load in Mongolia. The construction team seized the seven-month valid construction window from April to October 2025. All main structures and glass cladding were completed before winter set in. The remaining hot water heating system and environmental control commissioning were carried out indoors during the heating season, eliminating risks of outdoor winter construction.

● Dual-redundant Environmental Control Architecture to Guarantee Trouble-free Year-round Operation

To cope with the extreme low temperatures experienced during Mongolian winters, we designed a dual-redundant heating system for the entire 10-hectare greenhouse. The primary heat source consists of two coal-fired hot water boilers (one operational, one standby). The heating capacity of a single boiler covers the basic load of the whole greenhouse. Three diesel emergency hot water units serve as the backup heat source, which activate automatically in case of boiler maintenance or heating supply interruption. The internal thermal screen adopts a double-layer aluminum foil reflective curtain. When closed at night, a static air insulation layer forms between the glass roof and the curtain, acting as an extra thermal quilt inside the greenhouse. On the control system, all temperature sensors adopt a 2-out-of-3 voting logic. Temperature judgment for any zone relies on data comparison from three independent probes via the PLC; the median value is adopted for execution. Failure of a single probe cannot trigger misoperation. The system ran steadily during a cold wave of -42°C hitting Ulaanbaatar in January 2026. The third fruit cluster of tomatoes inside the greenhouse ripened normally with no frost damage observed.

This project lasted for a whole year, and we see it as a complete cross-border engineering delivery campaign.

▶ Phase 1: Qualification Acquisition and Detailed Design Advancement (Mar. – Aug. 2025)

In the first five months following contract signing, qualification approval and detailed design proceeded in parallel. The design team finalized all construction drawings for the 10-hectare project domestically. Deliverables included drainage slope calculations for each Venlo roof span, precise matching between glass grids and structural modules, and layout optimization for boiler rooms and thermal storage water tanks. Meanwhile, the on-site qualification team and legal consultants in Mongolia synchronized approval progress with the domestic team on a weekly basis, providing prompt responses to all supplementary document requests. After securing the construction permit in early August 2025, the first batch of containers was ready for shipment from Tianjin Port.

▶ Phase 2: Completion of 100,000 m² Within a Seven-month Tight Schedule (Apr. – Oct. 2025)

The construction crew mobilized in mid-April, when temperatures in Mongolia still fluctuated around 0°C. Foundation excavation and concrete pouring occupied nearly two months of the prime construction window. The 10-hectare greenhouse foundation comprises thousands of isolated column bases. Position deviation of embedded anchor bolts for every base must be kept within ±2 mm; otherwise, the upper steel frame cannot be aligned for installation. During frame erection, four foremen each led a team advancing simultaneously from the four greenhouse corners toward the center. Before daily work wrapped up, teams cross-checked one another to confirm consistent gutter elevations at all joints. Glass installation represented the highest-precision procedure. A total of 80,000 m² of 4mm tempered glass was laid according to factory serial numbers. Foremen inspected compression force on sealing gaskets piece by piece around every glass panel. Insufficient pressure leads to air leakage in winter, while excessive force creates concentrated stress and raises the risk of glass cracking. By late October 2025, when the first snow arrived in Ulaanbaatar, glass roofing was fully installed across all greenhouses, and work shifted indoors to hot water heating piping.

▶ Phase 3: Winter System Commissioning and Training for Mongolian Technical Team (Nov. 2025 – Feb. 2026)

Mongolia's winter provides optimal conditions for greenhouse commissioning. No field test can better verify whether this system can execute its full control logic reliably at -40°C. Our environmental control engineers were stationed in Ulaanbaatar for three full months. Every item was tested sequentially, ranging from boiler ignition and pipeline thermal balance, thermal screen retraction & deployment logic, to top window snow melting devices. The core training program was carried out concurrently. We created a three-month progressive training scheme of "theory learning + hands-on practice + independent on-site operation" for the 10-member technical team appointed by the Mongolian Ministry of Agriculture. In the first month, engineers guided technicians and followed site operations. In the second month, we provided auxiliary support during operations. In the third month, engineers only observed from the control room, allowing Mongolian technicians to independently complete the full workflow: temperature setting, boiler start-stop, and time-divided control of thermal screens. Upon completion of the three-month training, Mongolian technical supervisors were capable of independently handling common alarms and formulating daily environmental regulation strategies.

▶ Phase 4: Official Handover of the National-level Project (Mar. 2026)

In mid-March 2026, the Ministry of Agriculture of Mongolia held a formal handover and acceptance ceremony. The first batch of tomatoes inside the greenhouse had entered the color-turning stage, with vines laden with evenly plump fruits. The Minister of Agriculture personally led a delegation to inspect the greenhouse and receive our project briefing. On acceptance day, the boiler system, environmental control system and fertigation system ran continuously under full load for three hours. All indicators maintained normal status, and the project successfully passed acceptance.

One month after the delivery acceptance, we received two feedbacks from the project party. One was the formal acceptance conclusion - "All technical indicators meet the contract requirements, and the engineering quality is excellent". The other was a paragraph from the project leader during a video follow-up:

"The difficulty of this project has far exceeded our expectations from the beginning - qualification approval, cross-border construction, extreme cold commissioning, and every level was difficult. However, your team truly took full responsibility, from legal to technical to construction, and none of them were left behind. Now Mongolians can also eat locally grown fresh tomatoes in winter. This greenhouse is not only the achievement of our Ministry of Agriculture, but also of greater significance to ordinary people. I have forwarded your information to our colleagues in Kazakhstan, who are very interested in replicating this project in Central Asia."