Birthday garden centres

The Austrian garden centre operator Bellaflora celebrated its quarter-century last week – and gave itself two new garden centres as a birthday present. Friday, 7 February, saw the opening of the group’s 20th store at Leonding near Linz, and another outlet is to follow in Krems on 14 March. Expansion is to continue in the future as well, with projects already envisaged for Liezen (Styria) and Regau (Upper Austria). The company claims that the garden centre at Leonding with its total area of 8 000 m² is the most modern store of its kind in Austria. The outlay comes to approx. € 5.8 mio. Bellaflora, which regards itself as “Austria’s green number one”, achieved sales of € 65 mio with 500 employees in the last financial year, which amounts to growth of twelve per cent. This comes to approximately three per cent in like-for-like terms.