Euro Plant Tray keeps growing steadily. Production of the reusable plant tray is being scaled up, and new types are being added, says Managing Director Dirk Bansemer. He expects around 6 million EPTs to be in circulation by the end of the year. “I am convinced that we will remain the market leader.”
At the start of 2025, funding was still a challenge for EPT. Each of the 33 members of the cooperative contributed at least EUR 50,000. Taken together, that is a respectable sum, but nowhere near enough to produce a substantial number of trays. Three crowdfunding campaigns, two in Germany and one in Switzerland, raised EUR 4.5 million last year. In addition, a leasing company was brought in to finance the build-up of Euro Plant Tray’s pool, making a further EUR 6 million available for expanding the EPT pool of reusable trays.
“We now have more than EUR 10 million available to produce trays,” explains Dirk Bansemer, Managing Director at EPT since June 2023. The cooperative was founded in August 2022 by eight players in the European ornamentals trade, including VGB. Their shared aim is to reduce waste in horticulture through the introduction of reusable plant trays. According to Bansemer, EPT has been growing step by step ever since. It is producing increasing numbers of trays and the range is expanding. More than 2 million trays have either been delivered or are due for delivery.
