Fourteen years of shipping over 11,000 containers of flowers by boat. It is this focus on sea freight that discerns Colombian grower Capiro from the rest. Ocean transport saves costs and dovetails with the trend towards increased sustainability.
Globally, Capiro, based in the Antioquia region near Medellin, is a frontrunner in seafreighting. This has not always been the case, says Commercial Manager, José Henao. “The company started very differently over forty years ago: three friends were working together in horticulture. They weren’t growing flowers, but tomatoes. It was not a great success, partly because the tomatoes were too big for the market. Then, a shareholder’s father came up with the idea to start growing flowers.”
Initially, most of the attention was devoted to the United States as a client market. “But that changed due to high inflation and because an overly strong peso was too detrimental to the export industry to the US. Capiro started looking for new markets. That’s how the UK came into the picture.”
