The nursery.
McCallum's Livistona palms are grown from seed in a 15ha shade house. It takes almost two years for the palms to reach a height of 35 cm and then it is ready to be exported to the Netherlands.
"We work with long term agreements with our buyers. On a weekly basis, we export about 25,000 plants", says Ukwatte. Then, after a two week recovery from the trip to the Netherlands, at a Dutch grower, they are ready to be sold. "They are sold at an auction and some even go to Ikea", says Ukwatte.
Livistona palms in different pot sizes.
The demand for the Livistona palms, however, is not increasing at the moment but stagnating. According to Ukwatte, the reason for this stagnation is twofold. "First of all, we have long term agreements with the buyers and growing Livistona palms takes about two years. So, taking new orders is not that easy. Secondly, we see a general decrease in demand and prices for plants. Therefore, it makes it harder to take new orders as we cannot drop further in price. Our palms are in the nursery for about two years. So we have invested a lot of time and money to grow these varieties", he says.
Expanding to another market does not seem to be an option either. According to Ukwatte, the export of their palms is limited to the European market. "There is not much demand for palms in other countries." For this reason, and in order to let his company grow, he is eager to enter into new markets with other tropical plants.
We have another 10 ha shade house that is filled with different tropical mother plants and cut foliage varieties. "At the moment, we only export these plants and foliage when we receive orders. Unlike the Livistonia, the cultivation cycle of these topical plants are much shorter. Therefore we can supply the orders quickly.
"From time to time, we export tropical plants to Europe and the Middle East, but we would like to grow and export to different parts of the world. We know that the demand for tropical plants decreased in Europe. So, we are eager to enter new markets and we are therefore investigating the demand for the varieties we have in other countries."
McCallum Nurseries
McCallums Nurseries was established in 1993 and started as a cut foliage trading company. They switched to pot plant production when they decided to export internationally. Since then, they had to comply with international standards, they decided to establish their own nursery, and grow everything on the nursery as they are a Fair-trade and Global Gap certified company.
For more information
McCallum Nurseries
Indeera Ukwatte
Email: nursery@mccallum.lk/ Indeera@mccallum.lk
www.mccallumnursery.com