Growing Success in the Irish Garden Sector

Bord Bia continues to provide amenity businesses support through trade promotion events and business development activities

Mike Neary, Bord Bia’s Manager for Horticulture outlines Bord Bia’s key activities in the horticulture sector.

Horticulture

31 August 2016

Bord Bia implements a range of programmes and activities to support the Amenity Horticulture Sector across all of the supply chain. These include consumer & trade promotion, business development, market research and quality programmes.

GroMór Gardening Promotion

GroMór, is a collaboration of the gardening Industry encompassing the REI Garden Centre Group and Nursery Growers, Bord Bia, Westland Horticulture and Bord na Mona with financial contributions from all parties. Following the inaugural 2015 campaign a programme of activities for the 2016 campaign commenced in April, targeting the 35 to 45 year old female consumers and younger and less committed gardeners.

All sixty five participating garden centres were provided with a point of sale pack while twenty contributing nurseries were provided with GroMór plant pot labels. The range of activities for this year includes a strong PR campaign, a focus on social media channels, and demonstrations from the four appointed GroMór ambassadors around the country along with dedicated POS material and a focus on local growers and provenance.

Further activity will take place over the rest of the year, with the main channels of social media being utilised. Check out the newly revamped website at www.gromor.ie or join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

This is a positive step by the industry working together across the supply chain which will provide the opportunity for the amenity sector to submit an application to the EU to seek co-funding for a long term promotional campaign for gardening which will benefit all of the stakeholders.

Celebrating 10 years of Bloom

Bloom 2016 celebrated its 10^th year over the June bank holiday weekend at the Phoenix Park and was attended by a record 115,000 people. Visitor satisfaction rate for the show remains high, with an estimated value of sales generated over the five days in excess of €7.5 million.

Once again Bloom provided a high profile promotional platform for Horticultural businesses to exhibit promote and market their products and services receiving widespread media coverage.

The wider economic impact will be measured in the weeks to come and it is anticipated that Bloom will stimulate significant spend on garden related activity.

Marketing Assistance for Horticulture Companies

Each year Bord Bia makes funding available under the Marketing Assistance Programme (MAP) to assist companies with their marketing activities. A new Step Change Programme (SCP) was introduced in 2015 to assist a limited number of companies embarking on a new project to take their business to the next level. A total of forty horticulture applications were approved under the MAP programme for 2016 with a total of €146,500 awarded.

Business & Trade Development

Bord Bia continues to provide amenity businesses support through trade promotion events and business development activities which include supplier, product and brand development activities. Support is provided in the export market through mentoring and the facilitation of buyer introductions.

Exports

Bord Bia provides advice and support to nurseries focused on the export market including the facilitation of key contacts with buyers and mentor support.

Market Research and Information

Bord Bia carries out a measure of the gardening market every two years. All reports are available on the Bord Bia website. The measure for 2016 commenced in January and will progress throughout the year and is being undertaken by IPOSMRBI.

Bord Bia recently commenced a review of the labour status in the horticulture industry as a whole, which will provide an updated estimate of the levels of employment.

The study will also examining some of the upstream and downstream industries that support horticulture and provide further employment. In addition an attempt will be made to put a value on the contribution that horticultural employment makes to local rural economies. It is expected that the Labour survey will be completed by autumn 2016.