The newest member of the growing MPS family is Westerlay Orchids in Carpinteria, California. Nestled along the rugged coastline of the Pacific Ocean and the foothills of Los Padres National Forest you will find the greenhouses of Westerlay Orchids. Founded in 1978 as Westerlay Roses, this family-owned and operated company converted to potted orchids in 2003. Westerlay Orchids currently grows approximately 600,000 Phalaenopsis & Cymbidium orchids annually and continues to evolve. Westerlay Orchids supplies to wholesalers, major national supermarkets & home improvement chains in California & adjacent states.
“We were looking for an effective way to monitor and benchmark the usage of water, energy and crop protection agents against both our own past performance and peer performance. We looked at a couple of other certification programs and found they were not as rigorous and developed as MPS-ABC “, says Toine Overgaag, managing partner of Westerlay Orchids.
Another reason why Westerlay Orchids choose to certify themselves with MPS-ABC is to be able to communicate to their customers and members of the community that they are both environmentally responsible and involved in a continuous improvement process.
Grower inquiries
MPS is proud to have quality growers such as Westerlay Orchids, in their programs and welcomes grower and handler inquires in North America to their west coast coordinator, Charlotte Smit at (805) 524-9685 or c.smit@usa.my-mps.com, or to the east coast coordinator, Sandy Hering at (508) 758-3008, s.hering@usa.my-mps.com.
Source: MPS
