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Grower Story: Vreugdenhil Bulbs & Plants
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I am Jochem Vreugdenhil of Vreugdenhil Bulbs & Plants. I run the company, together with my wife Marjolijn. I am responsible for overseeing cultivation and production, and also partly for purchasing and sales. So, my role is actually quite broad and general. We grow the more luxurious bulbs and pot plants. We grow amaryllis, zantedeschia, ornithogalum and calla. And also a whole range of other products. We’ve got three production sites. We have one main location where we do the production and sales for the day trade. We are proud of our employees. We value the cooperation that exists, the team leaders, the interaction between the locations. We work together a lot. In addition, I’m proud to have so many collaborations outside of our own company. Like collaborations with other growers. We also take care of sales for other growers. We have collaborations abroad, in Zambia, South Africa, in Peru, and Brazil. Among other things for the production of amaryllis bulbs. We also have a partnership with a grower in Zambia. And we started supporting a good cause in Zambia about three years ago. It supports activities to preserve carnivores, so really the ecosystem in Africa. And since last year we also support a project in Blijdorp. That’s the zoo in Rotterdam. We support the meerkats' enclosure, so to speak And with our contribution, Blijdorp supports a number of projects abroad that are related to the protection of meerkats. Since 2014 we have a partnership with Kekkilä-BVB. We approached Kekkilä-BVB because a grower we work with used their products. We liked the substrate they were using for calla so much that we switched to a similar mixture ourselves. We’ve actually had a very good cooperation with Kekkilä-BVB ever since. They have really become a close partner of ours. We’ve done trials with all kinds of substrates. Some trials go well, some don't. But on average we are moving forward. And the goals we have, at least for calla, seem within reach. In any case, to us sustainability means reducing emission to a minimum. Within the company, but more and more also on the road to the consumer. We want to make our waste, emissions and products as sustainable as possible. It’s still a long way to go, but we are working hard to make our products as sustainable as we can. Together with Kekkilä-BVB we are working on ways to meet the wishes of the customers, of the end customers. We are conducting trials using alternative growing media. We actually do this with renewable raw materials such as wood fibre, BVB Accretio, coir and bark. We are trying all kinds of new mixtures. Not only for our calla program, but also for our other products. We analyse what works best for each situation. Sometimes there are quite a few surprises. Whenever we get surprised, we set up new trials to see where the differences come from. I expect that we can probably switch to substrates composed of fully renewable raw materials next year for some of our plants. That brings us new opportunities in the market.