Boomaroo Nursery, Victoria, Australia

We are told by many who visit us, that our nursery is the most modern and automated of its type in Australia. When we started, we were growing transplants in Speedling style 198 cell trays. When sales approached 40 Million seedlings a year “log jams” started to appear in the nursery processes. In addition growers started asking for a wider range of seedling varieties requiring trays of different cell sizes and dimensions. We found the internal logistics of the nursery were ineffective and made it difficult to meet orders on time.

This was when Transplant Systems introduced us to the 40 cm x 40 cm square tray system offering several trays of different cell size and cell volume but of the one common outer dimension .This enabled us to reconfigure our nursery to handle a single container which met the needs of the growers for different types of transplants. It enabled us to create a unified internal logistical system which gave economies and removed bottlenecks in our production flow.

Transplant Systems then introduced automatic planting machines which could use the same square trays offering further efficiencies in transportation and plant rack movement at farm locations. In effect we were driving out costs in production and introducing savings further down the supplier chain to the grower

We now employ state of the art management systems controlling the order, production and delivery.  All seedling production and tray movement is automated.

Put simply we can see new business opportunities coming from our relationship with Transplant Systems. We refer specifically to their development of the TS high density automatic planting machines. Many of our lettuce growers have been waiting for this machine to plant lettuce at close distances for harvesting the leaf. Other business will come where some seed varieties now sown direct in the beds can be successfully and economically raised as seedling transplants. This makes crop management easier, the ecology aspect is improved and the grower gains through reducing costs in their farming operations. We see this trend gaining momentum and we are well positioned to respond to this trend.