When Svensson Climate Consultant, Paul Arena, was still spending every day in the greenhouse as a grower, he was aware of the constant pressure of working with live goods.

“There’s a lot of responsibility,” says Arena. “It weighs quite heavily to know that if you mess up the watering on just one day the whole crop could fail.” It’s a background that helps him understand what his customers have to contend with each day, he says.

Now more live goods are on the way. Paul and his wife are expecting twins, who’ll join a baby boy just about to turn one.

They’ve been busy years since Arena joined Svensson in August 2022, but he has no regrets.

“It’s a really cool job,” he says, “and it’s fulfilling to have these specific, specialized growing technologies and be constantly helping customers.”

To do that, Arena visits customers all over North America and Canada and a kind of routine has emerged.

“We tend to start with a walk-around. They’ll show me some new equipment they’ve invested in and they’re proud of. We’ll look at screens, even talk about irrigation, though that’s not a Svensson service, and we’ll look at screens and nets.”

It’s on this tour that Arena hears a grower’s concerns.

“Sometimes they know something is up, or they want an improvement, but it can be a kind of feeling they have because they don’t have the tools to pin down cause and effect,” he says.

“I bring a whole pelican case of sensors with me, including a thermal imaging camera, hot wire anemometer, light core data logger, CO2, humidity and temperature sensors,” he says. “I could go on!”

On a recent trip, Arena took head temperature measurements and measured a highly satisfactory 20 deg C, but the grower pulled him aside to point out a strip that didn’t seem as healthy.

“It was just very clear,” he recalls, “here was what could have been 200m by 5m of growing area and the heads were measuring 15 deg C – which is a big problem,” he adds. “That’s a lot of production and it feels great to be able to pinpoint it for the grower, and put the data behind their hunch.”

Paul Arena says meeting so many people across the industry, from growers to owners to fellow suppliers, is a big perk of the job. And he likes that it’s a role that is demanding and means constant learning.

“Svensson sent me on Plant Empowerment courses, and I did a very intensive training at Wageningen University in the Netherlands,” he recalls. “I can learn a lot from my colleagues in the Netherlands, and then I learn on every customer visit.”

He says the team at Charlotte in North Caroline is small enough that they each pitch in and support each other’s efforts. And given the growing family, he says, he’s glad to be with an employer that puts family first – especially with the twins on the way.

“I had a lot of support from the company and generous time to be home when we had our little boy,” he recalls. “Absolutely! More than most US companies, that’s for sure.”