Plant Pass protects Growing Spectrum and its customers

Growing Spectrum sells premium plants to garden centres throughout New Zealand from its Waikato nursery. It employs 34 full-time staff on four hectares, producing 650,000 plants a year, including a large range of deciduous trees & shrubs and container grown ornamental shrubs & perennials.

With nation-wide distribution, biosecurity protocols are essential to prevent any outbreaks, as wells as protecting the professional reputations of Growing Spectrum and its retail customers.

Growing Spectrum trialled Plant Pass Biosecurity’s pilot. General Manager Grant Eyre says Growing Spectrum took part in the pilot as he thought it would be an interesting process to go through.

Grant found the Nursery Manual template useful to use with the Core Standard, and it had all the relevant and required information. In addition, John Liddle from the scheme was “a great support through the process and a great prompter to ensure that we stayed on task.” Growing Spectrum did not have to implement any new processes for the pilot but did have to start fully documenting and recording its processes. This includes such tasks as visually checking pallets of pots when they arrive for pests, and then recording that the check has taken place.

Grant says the scheme will reduce Growing Spectrum’s business risk. “And it is for this reason that we are taking part.”

Grant recommended templates be developed that included examples of signage for processes around the nursery to help to streamline implementation. He recommends the Plant Pass Biosecurity to others “It takes a great deal of time to put it in place if you are going to do it properly. It is yet another cost of compliance for a small business. But yes we understand it is going to be a requirement of being in this industry so we would recommend that others just get on and do it.”