‘Lower energy rates gave us some breathing space’
What’s keeping you busy at the moment?
“At the moment, we – my husband Dirk Decru and myself – are preparing for the cultivations and trade of autumn and winter. Our main crops for autumn are mini cyclamen and large flowered cyclamen. In addition, we have some smaller products such as bellis and viola. And we also use mini cyclamen for flower arrangements. My main concern at this time is to make contact with customers, either on trade fairs or by emailing them with our assortment. We have a website, but we’re not really using it. We’d like to spend more time on e-commerce in the future.”
How are things this year?
“We made a good start with our autumn sales. Overall, this year hasn’t been fantastic, but it definitely hasn’t been bad either. We have got quite a few difficult years behind us. Sales were hard sometimes and the costs were high. This year, the energy rates went down and that gave us some breathing space.”
Where are your plants going?
“Our buyers – all wholesalers – are based in Belgium and the north of France. We work together with three other nurseries for our distribution to the Ghent region. This way, we could negotiate a good price with the transport operator. Transport to northern France, we take care of ourselves. And we sell directly to some garden centres as well. Since ten months now, we’ve also been working with the Rhein-Maas auction in Straelen Herongen. Our sales there have gone up and we’re trying to make that a more regular event. We haven’t been working with Dutch exporters an awful lot, but they are most welcome. We have recently started spending some time on FloraXchange in order to let them know about our products. It’s good to introduce ourselves, because we have a high quality product.”
Any big plans for the future?
“In 2013 and 2014, we installed an ebb-and-flow system in two phases. We also made the transition to gas in 2013. Those were the last two large investments. For the time being, we don’t have any further plans, but we’re making sure that both of our growing locations are in optimal shape.”
Griet Leroy
Company: Decru-Leroy
Place: Oostnieuwkerke and Westrozebeke
Acreage: 2 ha
Crops: geranium, cyclamen and garden plants
Number of employees: five permanent
