'We are content with our partnership with Lensli. They are familiar with the cultivation methods of our plants and has already assist many companies in the transition to sustainable substrate.'
Flevoplant is a family business from Ens, consisting of 100 hectares. It now produces 70 million plants per year and would like to keep it that way for now.
'At the moment we are mainly looking for growth in quality gain and in sustainability and optimization of cultivation and business processes,' says entrepreneur and cultivation manager Niels Goossens.
In addition, the quality control received a major upgrade and they worked on sustainability.
Flevoplant has two sustainable Green Label Greenhouses and in 2020 was the first propagation company for strawberry plants in the Netherlands to receive the Elite Certificate from Naktuinbouw.
Flevoplant used 16% coconut substrate for the mother plants in their 100-litre containers. The cultivation of tray plants also had a high coconut content and, according to Goossens, was ready for change. That is why the management of Flevoplant was looking for a new substrate supplier for this step.
'Lensli already supplied substrate to colleagues we know well. Lensli is familiar with the cultivation methods of our plants and has already helped many companies with the transition to sustainable substrate. The choice for Lensli was therefore a logical step.'
The coconut mixture that Flevoplant had and partly still uses works well and does not actually need to be replaced. The aim of the new substrate is to put less pressure on one raw material, in other words a broader composite substrate. In short, the assignment for Lensli was as follows: 'invent a mixture with less coconut than we have now'.
'For the nut plant mixture, we arrived at a mixture of coconut fibre, Swedish peat and perlite. In the right proportions, this combination has a good water absorption characteristic and controllability on EC', explains account manager Patrick Winkelman of Lensli. 'The drainage is therefore perfectly fine.'
Goossens: 'The root development looked good, so we were able to scale up carefully. I have not experienced any relapse or problems. What I really liked is that potting with this mixture goes very smoothly, which I was quite hesitant about in the beginning. I don't see any difference with the old mixture, which we still use, by the way.'
The tray plants received the same mixture that Lensli supplies to fellow propagators. 'It also contains some bark and the peat fractions differ slightly from the mother plant mixture,' explains Patrick Winkelman.
Goossens concludes: 'We are satisfied with the way things are going. I do not rule out the possibility that we will continue to experiment in the coming years in order to make our substrate more sustainable. This is extra challenging for starting material and good partners are needed for that. We will maintain the collaboration with Lensli.'