According to A.M.A.'s Rick Bradt, the growth is partly driven by the increased demand for more locally grown vegetables and strawberries in North America. As well as this, the upcoming medicinal marijuana industry is providing a new market for supplies.
A.M.A Plastics expanded its team with the addition of René van Paassen, a former head grower at a leading Canadian greenhouse company.
Rene van Paassen joined AMA Plastics recently
"We are very happy to have René on board. He is very good on the technical side of hydroponic tomato growing, as that is what he has been doing for all his life. René is a very nice addition, as he will help us to deliver even better support and service to our hydroponic customers. As well as this he will also support us with the UrbanScape green roof system from BVB."
Soft fruit
The developments in the local soft fruit industry are also a catalyst for A.M.A.'s growth."A lot of things are happening over here in regards to production of soft fruit. Over the last year that industry has really taken off, as many growers want to take advantage of the buy local movement. You see that existing greenhouse growers are adding soft fruit like hydroponic strawberries to their production and new strawberry growers are popping up."
Rick explained that it's a promising new industry that brings them business as a supplier of substrates, gutter systems and containers. "We're talking with new people every week that want to start production of soft fruit in a controlled environment. Shawn Mallen, A.M.A.’s Hydroponics Manager, and René's expertise will help us to support those customers even better."
The new warehouse
New warehouse
A.M.A. recently modified and expanded their existing Kingsville warehouse to make it more accessible and create more space for their growth."Our A.M.A. Hydroponics building provides more opportunity to stock materials and build an inventory. It’s a separate, restricted access facility. From there we ship our products nationwide and to a steady group of customers in the United States. Most of our customers are based in Ontario, but we do see that several trends result in more business elsewhere too.
One of those trends is the shift to or addition of edible production at floral companies.
"We have a lot of customers who are either switching or partly adding hydroponic food production. The shift is happening rapidly. Here too, the buy local movement is driving the market for locally grown food and we are happy to serve businesses to become a part of that. From small scale hydroponic and organic producers or large scale tomato, pepper and cucumber greenhouse operations, they all bring a lot of business to our plate."
Medicinal Marijuana
Another trend is the burgeoning medicinal marijuana industry in Canada and the U.S."Sometimes it's difficult to follow, as the rules are so different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but we definitely work together with licensed medicinal growers in Canada and are working with growers in the USA as well. We supply them with substrates and growing containers. A lot of trialing is going on as well in order to find the perfect production method. But as the industry is getting more organized every year, we have some products available for them that some other suppliers aren’t able to offer."
Good atmosphere
Rick expects a lot from the coming years, as he sees good things coming in the industry. This was underlined by his findings from a recent trip to California. "Every single grower that I recently visited was busy or extremely busy. From tree production to nursery and hydroponic growers, the atmosphere is as good as I have seen it ever since we started there in 2009. This atmosphere is also seen in the rest of the US and Canada, good things are coming."
For more information:A.M.A. Plastics
Rick Bradt
T 519-322-1397
F 519-322-1358
ama@amaplas.com
www.amaplas.com