MD Nikki Burton, Technical Manager Dr. Victoria Wright, and Senior Associate Catherine Dawson recently welcomed HortWeek magazine editor Matthew Appleby to our Tetbury headquarters.
Marking the significant milestone of the 25th anniversary of our professional peat-free range Sylvamix®, we talked about all things growing media with a wide-ranging discussion covering the quarter-century long heritage of Sylvamix, the expansion of the retail range SylvaGrow®, the Responsible Sourcing Scheme, raw material availability and the emphasis Melcourt places on technical excellence.
During a tour of our state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, we demonstrated the ‘Made on’ dates that appear on every bag of compost, together with the messaging ‘Fresh compost is always best’ which assist with inventory management at retailers and help consumers know when to use products by.
Launched in 2001 the Sylvamix range now includes specialist formulations for potting, propagation, nursery stock production, hanging baskets and organic growing. In addition, Melcourt offers Sylvamix Special, a bespoke prescription service that allows growers to tailor mixes to the requirements of their crops, irrigation systems and production programmes. On raw material supply we discussed the true situation – that there is already enough wood and bark-based material available to replace the 700,000 m3of peat used in the UK each year, albeit not all currently in the correct stage of development. But other peat alternatives such as coir are already widely used and many others are being researched by Melcourt and others so the situation is far from static. Our active R&D programme will ensure that new UK-sourced sustainable materials will become a bigger part of the Melcourt story in future years.
Thank you to Matthew for coming to see us!
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