Ghent harbour a hive for potting soil production

Peltracom runs the biggest potting soil factory in Europe wit a production site and a laboratory in the Ghent harbour. During peak times as many as 50 000 bags of potting soils are distributed from here to professional customers flower, fruit and vegetable growers and park and public gardens services and the retailers supermarkets, DIY chains and garden centres each day. Potting soil is used to grow anything from strawberries to the basil one finds in the supermarket and chrysanthemums. Peltracom CEO Stefaan Vandaele explains that they have about 1 000 different kinds of potting soil for all the different plants in the industry. Their laboratory employs almost as many staff as their production site. “We keep track of everything, from weeds to air and water quality in the soil.” Thanks to the short-term benefits of potting soil for plant, fruit and vegetable growing, the yield of tomatoes planted in potting soil – with peat, coconut and tree bark as basic ingredients – is much higher than when grown in ground soil. According to Vandaele, growers only started to use potting soil as a medium in the seventies. Despite the merits of potting soil, this industry has been under pressure for the past few years. Around the turn of the millennium Western Europe reached a saturation level which kept the price on the same level as in the seventies  despite an increase in the production cost. “This has forced us to continually improve on efficiency to keep ahead,” says Vandaele. Consequently they must continue to specialise, focus more on niche markets and deliver on new trends like fore example small city gardens where people grow their own tomatoes and herbs, or roof gardens. On top of that, they continue to explore improved growing techniques. “Within a few years our production will look completely different to what it’s like at present,” he predicts. “That does not necessarily mean that we will increase our production. We will rather follow a more natural approach. Everything hinges on sustainability. Growing a tomato that actually tastes ‘tomato’ without the use of fertilizers and pesticides, or too much water, is what we’ll aim for.”
At the end of the day, however, all these efforts towards innovation will only secure a better price if Peltracom can provide enough economic weight in the balance facing its growing customers. To this end the group has made a number of acquisitions which saw it grow to own nine factories in Europe two in Belgium, two in France, four in Poland and one in Latvia, where the group also manages a 3 000-hectare peatery. In only ten years the turnover has increased sevenfold from 8.6 million in 2002 to 60 million euros this year, making Peltracom number three in Europe after the Danish group Pindstrup and German Klasmann-Deilmann. The group is almost fully owned by Hein Deprez, who is also joint owner of the fruit and vegetable giant Univeg and PinguinLutosa, the manufacturer of frozen and tinned vegetables.
 
‘Potting soil may be no high tech, it certainly requires much technical experience. And in that field we are at the top. It is a speciality of this region – the Benelux and Germany, where a lot of greenhouse horticulture has developed’, Vandaele explains. With this know how Peltracom nowadays exports far beyound the European boundaries. ‘Still a lot of regions are in a transition stage to the use of potting soil’, he says. ‘A couple of years ago we started peateries in Poland. Today we import more in Poland than we export from there. Purchasing power has developed and people start to build their own home and lay out their own gardens and as a consequence they’ve started buying potting soil’.