Dümmen Buys Costa Rican Propagator

Chris Beytes

You may not know Florexpo, but chances are you’ve received plants from this annual, perennial, herb, succulent and grass young plant supplier. Based in Paraiso, Costa Rica, they’ve been providing cuttings worldwide, including North America via Ball Seed, McHutchison/Vaughan’s and Gloeckner.

Dümmen Orange announced that they’re acquiring Florexpo’s entire business, including top management talent, and moving everything to their newly upgraded facilities in Antigua, Guatemala (which happens to be the former Ecke Ranch facility, acquired when Dümmen merged with Agribio Group in 2013).

Perennials will be moved first, starting this fall; the rest of the product line should be up and running by April 2016. Perennials and herbs will be sold through the above three broker partners. Annuals, however, will be integrated into Dümmen’s Oro Farms production, also in Guatemala, and will be available through Dümmen’s existing annuals broker network.

Key management will make the move, too. Said Fernando Altmann, Managing Director at Florexpo, “We feel fortunate to become part of a larger, global and professional organization. Long-term, this will offer security in quality for our valued customers.”

Why buy Florexpo? Synergy, said Managing Partner Perry Wismans in a press release.

“In its long history, Florexpo has built a good assortment, an outstanding sales network and a professional team of employees. With this move, Dümmen Orange takes the next step in realizing its growth strategy—aimed at creating synergies in technology, production and sales. We realize these synergies by distributing a variety of breeding programs and cross-selling these products to our existing customers, who benefit from increased choice, greater reliability, more stability and high production quality.” GT