The palm tree was a rare appearance in the Dutch gardens about twenty years ago, now many gardens have had a tropical touch. Gardenpalms on Erica successfully stepped into the growing market of cold -resistant palms for years, but this week the company was declared bankrupt.
“A loss of the life’s work of founder Herbert Riphagen,” calls curator Jan van Burg. He currently has 15,000 square meters of greenhouse space under his care. Those greenhouses are still filled with palms and other exotic plants. What will happen to this must show the future.
The curator hopes for a restart of the company, but is also real. “As the current market is now, a restart does not seem very likely to me. And then I will have to look for other ways of selling,” says Van Burg.
According to the curator, the owner and grower Herbert Riphagen was really a pioneer in the field of palms and bringing other exotics to Europe that can spend the winter here. “This market was very interesting years ago, it was an unexplored market. Riphagen was one of the first to get in here, he was really a precursor. The company also achieved great successes, but that also woke up many followers.”
And the beginning of the end seems to have originated there. According to curator Van Burg, the bankruptcy is the result of a combination of circumstances. But the biggest problem is that more parties have entered the market. “Large parties, such as hardware stores and international online shops, which now sell these types of palms for demolition prices. In the meantime, there is much planted in Erica. There is a lot of supply on the market, but there is also a decreasing question. That is pinching in the cost structure, the management told me,” explains the curator after a first exploratory conversation at the palm company.
“This man really counts as a pioneer, he really had a strong company. Even in Coronatijd the company did well. While stores were closed, he had a lot of webshop trade, people invested in their gardens,” says Jan van Burg.
But after that the image has changed. According to the bankruptcy trustee, considerable cuts were made last year: “Almost all the staff has flowered. At the moment there is only one employee in service. But that intervention has not helped enough to keep the head above water.”