Farm manager Miriam Kimani: "We like trying new products"​

Market demand

Meeting the market demand (more about that here) may be a challenge, but Miriam is happy with this new practice. Miriam: “Before we were working with market demand, we lacked some aim. We were unsure of how much we would be able to sell, and when the market wanted which flowers. It was always a bit of a guess, and therefore a risk. Now we are growing flowers that we know the market will want to buy. This gives us a lot more security. We even know the approximate price we can expect, so that has made budgeting and planning a lot easier. We have a lot more clarity now.”

“The market demand is set for the whole Marginpar group, so we sit down together and divide the production. We need to work out which crops will go to which farm.” This depends highly on the climate, but also the space available at each farm. It is the farm manager’s responsibility to choose the right crops. Miriam: “New crops are exciting to grow, but also come with uncertainty. But we like trying new products, setting new trends. The product development domain also provides a lot of support, we are all seeing the same tree.”

One big team

This collective focus has really helped the collaboration of the different farms in Africa. Miriam: “We had amazing workshops about collective focus and ‘seeing the same tree’. Before this training, every farm was only concerned about their own performance. Now we realise that whatever happens on other farms also affects us.

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We are one big team

Whenever a problem arises at a farm, other farm managers will assist, because it is the group’s problem. The same shift has taken place within the farms. The departments used to work independently and could sometimes have different goals in mind. For instance, production would want to produce as many stems as possible and would sometimes rush it. Our value adders in the packhouse would then get a lot of stems that did not meet the quality standards and would have to reject them. The company would suffer. Now when there is a quality issue, we get to the root cause together and fix it together. We really support each other.” 

Inverting the hierarchy triangle

This newfound team spirit is also reinforced by ‘Hamuka’, which is a practice we started seven years ago. Miriam: “The principle of Hamuka is trust, and we inverted the hierarchy triangle. Instead of managers telling the value adders what they need to do, the value adders are taking their own responsibility and are telling the managers what they need to be able to do their jobs properly.

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It is all about job ownership and responsibility.

Over the course of the seven years we have been implementing this, we have grown from producing 10 million stems per year to 25 million stems per year on this farm alone.” 

The sky is the limit

Miriam keeps aiming for more: “We are going in the right direction and are expanding very fast. I see this company going very far in the next few years. For me personally, the sky is the limit. If there is another stair to go up, I will take up the challenge. I am very ambitious to take the company to the next level.” 

Next Tuesday...

We are preparing for the Trade Fair in Aalsmeer (will we see you there?), so in two weeks we will give the floor to ESG officer Steve Muchangi.

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