More and more greenhouses coated worldwide

There's plenty to celebrate at chalk specialist Hermadix. According to Jeffrey Pouw, sales of their chalk products have more than doubled over the past two years. "More growers are working with coatings worldwide."

Still, it is not the Dutch market where Hermadix sees major sales growth. "We’ve made a growth spurt particularly thanks to our distributor Royal Brinkman," says Pouw. "And that's mainly international. The Dutch market is still slightly growing, but by far doesn’t show the growth that we see in other countries. The market here is already quite saturated and there is some competition. The situation in horticulture is also not ideal. The industry is under pressure. In combination with the climatic conditions, growers then sometimes choose to skip the coating."

Internationally, this is completely different. "In Australia, it is not an option for growers not to chalk or coat. The light intensity there is much higher." And Pouw also sees sales increase in countries like Japan and China. "Because we reach new customers through Royal Brinkman, but also because existing clients are expanding. We are a relatively new player and coatings are still pretty unknown. Vegetable growers traditionally aren’t used to chalking, in fact they want to keep the greenhouse as clear as possible. The coatings bring more light into your greenhouse, but in a different way. This requires adjustments to your cultivation. As a grower, you should be able to confidently work with this. A grower has 2 hectares coated in the first year, 4 hectares the next and the whole greenhouse in the third year."

Also thanks to these developments, the company’s sales of chalk products - both coatings and chalkings - has more than doubled in the past two years. And given these market conditions Pouw does not expect that growth to stop in the coming years. "We have been at it for ten years now and still have a lot of growth potential. If international growers favor us as much as the Dutch contractors and begin to approach chalking and coating just as professionally, the coming years look promising."

Check out these videos made by Hermadix concerning the spraying and the cleaning of greenhouses.