QUILLOTA, Chile – Despite growing the biggest share of tropical plants sold in Chile, Viveros Hijuelas is planning bigger things for the future.
“We’re changing from production to marketing. Now we’re thinking of what the market wants, not what can be produced,” said Dick Houter, a technical engineer in floriculture, who came from Holland to help the company. “Tropical plants were a luxury product, but it’s changing.”
Viveros Hijuelas was started 20 years ago by the Sone family near Quillota, an hour’s drive from Chile’s capital of Santiago.
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The family-owned operation involves Juan Sone and his wife, son Alfredo, daughter Patricia and her husband Gasper Goycoolea.
The company produces about 60 percent of Chile’s tropical plants. According to Heriberto Acu–a, responsible for sales, the company sells about 80,000 plants a month, and expects to sell a million plants this year.
“We prefer tropical, foreign plants instead of common,” Acu–a said, adding the company plans to grow more flowering and potted plants.
Most of the plants are sold to wholesalers, but the company also sells individual plants to the public. It has two stores in Santiago, and sells to a superstore there.
The plants – mostly for indoor use – include fig trees, gardenias, philodendrons, bird of paradise, araucaria, umbrella trees, coleus and poinsettias.
The seed business is also important to the company. It buys seed throughout the world, multiplies it and exports it back overseas.
“The flower seed is all for export. Our contracts are from big companies in small quantities,” Acu–a said.
The Quillota site has more than eight hectares of greenhouses, but the company has facilities in other locations in Chile. Each facility specializes in a different aspect of the business. One prepares soil for different planting requirements, one has the mother stock, one places concentrates on bulbs, and other places produce seed.
Numbers employed
Thirty-six employees work at the Quillota site, but up to 250 work in all the facilities combined. During the peak period, November to February, there are up to 1,000 people working for the labor-intensive business.
Houter said prices are stable, and production costs are relatively cheap.
The greenhouses are made of plastic, and water is drawn from three wells about 30 to 40 metres deep. Growth hormones are used to quicken root growth and chemicals are used to control insects and fungus.
The main cost is labor and as that cost has climbed, the company began looking for more efficient production methods, Houter said.
He said the irrigation system provides an unequal amount of water to plants and the greenhouses’ temperature aren’t regulated. As well, the company keeps no definitive inventory.
“We will have drip irrigation in within the next month or so to cut down on labor and give equal amounts of water to the plants.”
Because the temperature can drop to 0 C at night, and the plants need a temperature of 10 to 12 degrees, the greenhouses are heated in winter with wood and the heat is run through pipes to the root chambers to keep the cuttings heated.
New greenhouses have been imported from Argentina and natural gas will be used to heat them.
In another effort to improve quality, the company imports its stock. “We import once a year clean stock from Holland.”
Houter said it’s not a common practice in Chile to import stock. Usually companies keep reproducing their plants and quality is reduced.
However, companies were influenced to change a few months ago when Chile became a member of an international organization which respects plant breeder rights and pays royalties.
