Post-harvest managers Jemimah & Priscilla: Company's 'guardians'

This week, we tell the story of two of our Post-Harvest Managers, who happened to be in the Netherlands for a work visit. They have both been with Marginpar for many years, started out as value adders in the field and went through all the ranks in post-harvest to become the managers that they are today. Priscilla: “We are true examples of Marginpar’s motto ‘We grow people, our people grow unique flowers’. We have really grown under Marginpar’s wings.” Jemimah is situated at Kudenga Farm and Priscilla manages the post-harvest process at Bondet Farm, which are both situated in Kenya. Their responsibility lies in the entire process from right after harvesting up until boxing and shipping the flowers. 

Checking one, two, three

It’s our vision to grow unique summer flowers of great, consistent quality. Priscilla: “Quality is key to maintain our customers. If we don’t have good quality, our competitors will get ahead of us and we lose the market.” Jemimah: “Quality doesn’t start at post-harvest. When everything before harvest is done right, from breeding to growing the flowers, we have fewer challenges at post-harvest. We have three quality checkpoints; the first one is right after harvest, the second during grading and the third right before the flowers are boxed. If at any point an issue occurs, the stem is taken out and the problem is communicated back to production.” Priscilla adds: “We don’t wait with this feedback, we don’t want this issue to keep occurring so we take it back immediately.” 

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We have three quality commandments: Do not accept bad quality, do not process bad quality, and do not pass on bad quality.

Team work makes the …

Sometimes, an issue might be a bit more persistent. In that case, the post-harvest managers always have back up. Priscilla: “We are one, and we have one aim. Problems are never personal, and whenever a challenge arises, we face them together. Together with our team on our farm, but also together with other post-harvest managers, especially with those who grow the same crops. On top of that we also get a lot of support from our Dutch QA colleagues Bram, Werner and Gosia.” Jemimah: “A good example is the challenge we found in Gypsophila. After harvest, Gypsophila needs a rather specific treatment in order to bloom. We tackled this challenge together with all Gyps growers, as a team. Now it does so well and we get great returns; I am so proud of this.”

…Dream work

Both Jemimah and Priscilla are happy to work with the Hamuka culture (which focuses on trusting, valuing and empowering our people, and continuous improvement of our processes). Jemimah: “We experience so much trust. When you have that space when working, no one looking over your shoulder all the time, you are able to come up with more ideas. We discover a lot because of the space we get.” Priscilla: “Getting the opportunity to visit the Netherlands has also been great. We got to see how our flowers arrive in the Netherlands, which can be totally different than how we sent them off in Kenya. When the flowers come out of the box , you can tell they are not happy, but after getting recut and put on water you see the life coming back to them. That is such an amazing sight! We also got to see our flowers being auctioned. We have learned so much about what we have to improve, and it was great meeting our Dutch colleagues! 

Next up

The story of Jane Kimani, who is Senior Technical Post-Harvest Manager for all Kenyan and Ethiopian farms.