Dümmen Orange Naivasha The hub of new flower varieties

Dümmen Orange is a leading company in the breeding and development of cut flowers, pot plants, bedding plants, bulbs, succulents and perennials. It has been uniting the world’s top breeders under one distinctive brand for over 100 years. With their deep-rooted commitment to people, their values and their unsurpassed passion for excellence, Dümmen Orange is uniting the world through the language of flowers.

Olij Kenya Propagation is one of Dümmen Orange’s state of the art production sites in Kenya. It is part of a strong network of the company’s production, Propagation, Breeding and cutting farms in East Africa.

Dummen Orange have other production sites in East Africa region such as Fides Kenya in Embu, Olij Ethiopia, Redfox Ethiopia, Fides Tanzania and Fides Uganda in the east. The facilities at Olij Kenya, includes a show house for Roses, Cut Mums, Carnations and summer flowers, budwood production area and well-equipped vase life testing room as well as recently established the world class breeding facility.

“We share the biggest part as a breeder of cut flower’s in the global floriculture market with complete range flower buckey”, says Vijay M. Bhosale, the General Manager at the Naivasha site. The farm was previously named Olij before it joined Dummen Orange in 2016. The farm has over 1000 varieties of roses including new codes, semi commercial and commercial. A bunch of the new rose varieties that are well known in the market are Avalanche+, Sweet Avalanche+, Magic Avalanche+, Peach Avalanche+, Sorbet Avalanche+, Fiesta+, Espana, Monalisa, Pink Arrow, Red Dragon, Muru, Hermosa, Jackpot, Lizz, Spark Condor, Takazi, Pink Takazi, Pearl Takazi, Joanna, Kingsday, Miss Coquette, Cheetos, Peach Tacazzi, Glamorous, Dilek, Cherry Tree pink, Candacy, Cheeky, Boulevard among others.

For cut chrysanthemum, they have new varieties such as Country Lime, Iceland, Feeling Good and Pina Colada Yellow. For Carnations, their top varieties are Pelayo, Cortes, Holly, Baltico, cervantes, Malbec, Celtic, Fama, Damascus, Pandora, Zenit, Lorca, Purple Sky and Purple Damascus.

The company keeps testing and introducing new varieties time to time. “The market trend appears like a few years back it was auction rose varieties, in between there was spray rose varieties, but now it’s back to supermarket rose varieties” says Vijay.

“Increasing input costs every year, changing market trends and prices variation in the flower market are the major challenge for the growers as well as breeders”. he continues.

Roses are been produced and supplied with various range of stem lengths and head sizes as well as these roses distinguish themselves by a wide range of colors. “The key to Dümmen Orange’s success is a broad and deep product range says Vijay.

To keep up with market and create new trends, Dümmen Orange launched a new rose label Rozuri ‘roses from Africa’ in April 2019. Rozuri “roses from Africa” is a new label for the retail sector from rose growers in Ethiopia and Kenya with whom Dümmen Orange works closely together.

Rozuri “roses from Africa” stands for a new colorful label of African roses, inspired by the African continent. The name Rozuri is derived from the word uzuri which means “beauty” in Swahili.

The Rozuri varieties are medium-sized flowering roses that have been specially selected for the supermarket segment. This specific assortment from Dümmen Orange is still relatively unknown to the retail market and will therefore be actively introduced in the coming period to the most important supermarket chains in England and Germany.

A special breeding program has been set up to create a high-quality retail assortment of this Rozuri range. Rozuri roses have been extensively tested for a good vase life, always resulting in excellent scores.

Dummen Orange is also big on sustainable floriculture. They have a program called GreenCare which is built off of the principle, “Start Clean, Stay Clean”. These are preventive hygiene measures for people and locations to keep plants clean. “We have very strict hygienic protocols in terms of sustainable floricultural and agricultural practices and a good code of conduct in the use of friendly chemicals for the environment and humans as well” Vijay explains.

They take sustainability a step further through GreenGuard which fits both Integrated Pest Management and customers’ plant resilience systems. GreenGuard is a protocol in the industry to meet growers and consumer demand. The result is sustainably grown products by growers. By minimizing chemical residues, Dümmen Orange enables growers to introduce benefits immediately to their crops.

The company is also introducing a new soil-less medium called Basewell. It is a state-of-the-art rooting technology for growers that simplifies processes, optimizes space, and saves labor. The soil-less medium is important for the growers intending to export cuttings for countries where rooted cuttings with certain rooting media are not permitted to import.

The company embraces its social responsibilities and invests in the health, safety and personal development of its staff globally.