A family-owned Aussie flower farm is blooming in the face of stiff competition from cheap imported blossoms, proving the value of locally-produced flora. With the peak body Flower Industry Australia (FIA) estimating half of the flowers sold in Australia are imported, local farms like those owned by the Padovano family are a rose among the thorns.
Ingrid and John Padovano and their four children own and operate Jonima Flowers, a third-generation wholesale business that supplies the Sydney Flower Market and local farmers' markets.
Ninety-five per cent of the flowers they sell are grown year-round on their 10-hectare farm at Yanderra, south-west of Sydney. With the number of local flower growers in sharp decline due to the cheap imports, Ms Padovano said they were "strategic" in how they ran their business, which has 20 employees.
"We are competing with people in countries where they are paying wages of $1 a week," Ms Padovano said. "So we no longer compete locally, we compete globally – in the sense that in every decision we make, we have to make it work on a global scale. That's how we run our business."
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