Natalya Pykanova and David Espinosa at the FlowersExpo 2016 in Moscow, Russia.
Stability ruble
Russia is Matiz Roses' main market, followed by the United States and Europe. The stabilization of the ruble against the dollar over the last year has helped them a lot regarding pricing and demand. "The fluctuating ruble in 2015 and the first half of 2016 affected the prices heavily", says owner of Matiz Roses, David Espinosa. "The ruble against the US dollar was fluctuating. There could be a 20 percent difference between one week to another." At that time, Espinosa had contact with his buyers on a weekly and sometimes even on a daily basis to discuss the prices of their standing orders. Fortunately, from September 2016 onwards, the ruble started to stabilize, and over the last year, Espinosa has seen demand increasing. "With a stable ruble, it is not that challenging for the Russians to have standing orders again, so the demand increased. On top of that, as we cannot meet the demand we are now increasing our prices with about 8 to 10 percent, depending on the variety of course."
Unexpected weather conditions
A reason for not meeting the demand is the changing weather conditions. "Increasingly more often we experience unexpected weather that affects the production. Last year, for example, cold nights decreased the production by 18 percent and this year, the rain and less sunlight did by 23 percent. From January till August this year in Lasso, Cotopaxi where the farm is located, our environmental station measured 30 percent more rain than usual in the same time period."
New varieties
Espinosa wants to refresh the Matiz Roses portfolio with new varieties. "The current greenhouse is planted with 38 varieties and upon request of our Russian and US customers, we want to increase our portfolio of varieties. So, together with our customers, we are choosing the varieties with the most potential for the future", he says. "Some of the new varieties we are including in our growth are Pink Mondial, Lola, Quick Sand, Saga & Gotcha, to name a few."
Expansion greenhouse
For these reasons, Espinosa decided to expand the farm by 2 ha. "It will increase our production by 15 to 20 percent considering the estimated productivity of the new varieties chosen, which, in turn, will enable us to respond to a decrease in production due to unfavorable weather conditions. Besides that, we will have more room to plant the desired new varieties."
FlowersExpo Russia
And their expansion will also be translated in their booth at the FlowersExpo in Moscow, Russia. "This year, we will have a bit bigger booth where we will show more new and the most popular varieties for the Russian market." The FlowersExpo will be held in the Corcus Expo from September 12-14, 2017.
For more information
Matiz Roses
David Espinosa
Email: david@matizroses.com
www.matizroses.com