If approved by Oberon Council, the development will include 40 hectares of glasshouses, a plant nursery and sorting and packing facilities. 

The Oberon site will become part of the biggest hi-tech glasshouse farming operation in Australia.

The proposal was launched to the Oberon community this week. 

The $116 million development will be built on 56 hectares of land and yield premium hydroponic vine crops, including tomatoes, eggplant and capsicum.

By the time the three-stage project is completed, 508 people will have been employed, including 308 direct jobs and approximately 200 indirect jobs. 

In total, Nectar Farms will invest $120 million in projects in Oberon and Stawell, in regional Victoria.

Mr Sterrick said Oberon has the perfect climate. 

“We are quite happy for the evenings to be cold. What we don’t want is for it to be too hot or too humid,” he said.

He said Oberon was also close to infrastructure and services and was only two-and-a-half to three hours by road from Sydney. 

“It’s exactly what we are looking for,” Mr Sterrick said.

He said the glasshouses would be designed in Holland, a country that leads the world in glasshouse design. 

Mr Sterrick said the glasshouse roof would have a huge surface area which would assist with water collection and solar energy production

He said smart farming brought technology and farming together to create a hydroponic operation that used significantly less water than conventional produce farming, without the use of pesticides.

“We will be using a fraction of the water we would be using in a field,” he said.

“For instance, $100 worth of tomatoes grown in a field would use 37,000 litres of water. The same amount of tomatoes produced in a glasshouse uses less than one thousand litres of water because we recirculate it.

“In a field you can produce around 6.5kg of tomatoes per square metre. We expect to get between 65-85 kg per square metre.”