With the help of advanced and efficient greenhouses, automation, machinery and hydroponic technologies installed on a very large scale, Agroto grows a variety of fresh produce that is marketed everyday under their O'Fresh brand to a large number of supermarkets of the Giant retail chain.
From bell peppers to lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes and even culinary herbs, it is impressive to see how diversified their production is. But it is especially the amount of automation that impresses. Because after all, you would not expect to see this kind of investments in an economy that has access to relatively cheap labour.
"Well that is not the case anymore", explained Wong Lee Chiat of YG Park. "The Malaysian greenhouse industry faces serious challenges in regards to sourcing skilled and motivated employees. The minimum wages have seen a steep increase over the last couple of years. As well as this, there is stricter law enforcement and control on illegal workers and malpractices. It has become very difficult to find enough workers and growers are heavily investing in automation."
Wong Lee Chiat works for Malaysian plant nursery YG Park. This company was one of the first plant nurseries in the Cameron Highlands who started with the installation of horticultural precision technology to automate seeding, transplanting and other labour intensive work at their nursery.
Alessandro Mazzacano of Urbinati together with Wong Lee Chiat of YG Park at the Horti Asia in Bangkok last week.
YG Park imported a lot of machinery from Urbinati in Italy and later even became the local sales and service representative of Urbinati in the Cameron Highlands. Nowadays YG Park still runs a large tropical plant nursery, but the holding company that they are part of is also the driver behind the launch of other large scale automated Malaysian greenhouse projects like the one of Agroto.
Urbinati's Alessandro Mazzacano visits his Malaysian customers of Agroto.
YG Park's expertise in automation helped the Agroto project to become one of the most automated and advanced hydroponic greenhouses in Malaysia. They invested in a 10 hectare greenhouse and have plans to expand this to a total of 40 hectare within the next three years.
The sowing line of Urbinati is geared to this capacity and enables the grower to produce a daily output of 500,000 lettuce, romaine salad, iceberg and lollo rosso crops per day, aside of a wide range of cucumber, chili peppers, cabbages, eggplants and herbs. All these plants would normally have been sowed and transplanted by hand, affecting the quality and yield.
The O'Fresh branded produce from Agroto is mostly destined for export to the large Giant hypermarket retail chain in Singapore, as well as to local fresh markets and restaurant chains like KFC. With a rising middle class in these growing economies, the demand for fresh, responsibly and safely grown produce increases by the day and it's expected that Agroto and other colleague growers in the area will need to speed up their production in order to keep up with the demand. Automation plays a crucial role in order to achieve these goals.
For more information:
YG Park (Urbinati distributor Malaysia)
ygpark999@gmail.com
Urbinati
alessandro.mazzacano@urbinati.com (Export sales manager Urbinati)
Agroto
www.agroto.com.my