Green Portugal

The management team of Koelnmesse took the opportunity presented by the setting of the preliminary press conference for this year's Spoga+Gafa in Lisbon to familiarise the journalists in attendance from all over Europe with Portugal's DIY and garden sector. A store tour took in a flagship store belonging to the French home improvement chain Leroy Merlin (see separate report in this issue) and a garden centre operated by the medium-sized chain Horto do Campo Grande.
This garden and plant specialist is a genuine favourite of customers in and around the Portuguese capital. Anyone who has visited one of its three garden centres will know why even a heavyweight such as Leroy Merlin isn't prepared to engage in competition with it, because one can't get greener than Horto do Campo. Established in 1979, the company also operates two smaller stores and its own nursery, and it puts a different slant on its offering depending on the location.
Overall a vast range of plants and decorative items for indoors and outside is on offer, along with a broad spectrum of services extending from gardening and landscaping including design, plants for interiors, hiring plants for events and garden care to vertical gardens. Its online florist's shop delivers free within the capital city. The Quinta da Eira outlet outside Lisbon also has a premium Weber-Stephen shop offering "a very important assortment," according to manager Pedro Pulido Valente. The unique climate features naturally have an influence on the plants that are available: in this westernmost country in Europe, cacti and other succulents sold as houseplants further north in Europe are presented outdoors under a canopy.

The familiarisation tour of the Portuguese horticultural sector was concluded with a visit to the extremely dynamic plant producer Planta Livre. The company was only founded in 2006, but in the last four years it has nearly doubled its sales to EUR 6.5 mio. Its distribution team is currently working on increasing the export quota significantly from the 8 per cent recently attained.
This initiative should be helped along not only by the steady increase in the cultivation area at both production locations, which grew from 20 to 76 hectares between 2014 and 2018 and almost half of…