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Home > SAUDI ARABIA > Spotlight
THE PARABLE OF CICCOLELLA, FROM FARMING TO GLOBAL LEADERSHIP IN THE FLOWER MARKET
Ciccolella (www.gruppo ciccolella.com), with approximately 24 hectares of farmed greenhouses in the Italian region of Puglia (between Molfetta, Terlizzi and Giovinazzo, in the Bari province), 24 hectares recently completed in Basilicata (in the town of Melfi, in the province of Potenza) and 70 hectares of greenhouses nearing completion in Candela (Foggia) is today the most important European producer of roses and anthurium. The Group, owner of several patents in the floral sector and constantly engaged in the research and development of new varieties, is led by Vincenzo Ciccolella.
President, how did the Ciccolella family's entrepreneurial adventure in the flower-growing sector start?
The business was started by my father in the early Seventies. At that time, no farming entrepreneur thought about growing flowers. There had been a few initiatives of the kind in the Molfetta-Terlizzi area, in Puglia, but these did not go very far. In practice, one can say that at that time there was no flower-growing in the area. While traditional farming was showing its first signs of decline, ahead of the introduction of the quota system subsequently institutionalised by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the non-food sector, on the other hand, was not subject to CAP's restrictions and was enjoying a boom in demand, from Italy as well as from abroad. This guaranteed significant profits.
Still, the region of Puglia was still struggling to emerge as one of Italy's major production areas. At that time Liguria and the area of Pescia, in Tuscany, were dominating. Was your father ever afraid of having had the wrong instinct, of having risked too much?
No. Quite simply it was a timing issue. One had to know how to wait, since the first floricultural activities were only beginning to appear in Southern Italy in those years. However some infrastructural conditions, such as a lower energy prices, made the South a potentially strategic area. And so it happened, since today the South has surpassed traditional Italian districts in the national floricultural production. Some services and part of the distribution chain have remained in the North.
It is also thanks to Ciccolella if the South has acquired a leadership role in the sector, as only in 2005 the company produced 15 million roses and three million anthuriums, and plans to add to its 120 current hectares of greenhouses - either already cultivated or under construction - another 100 hectares in the region of Calabria, in the town of Simeri Crichi. President, is it only possible to excel with large-size operations in the floricultural sector?
From the very beginning we have pursued a growth in size, aware of the fact that in our sector critical mass is a success factors. To satisfy our clients, however, big numbers are not enough. We need continuity and a quality offering: prime-quality flowers always, 365 days a year, because the product can never falter from the market. This is the reason why our flowers are grown in a protected environment: only greenhouses allow for flowers to be grown year-round.
If the first step is to have an ever-available product, the second is to sell it in as many markets as possible, considering that roses last a few days and anthuriums can last up to one week. Internationalisation began with the acquisition of Zurel BV, a Dutch company among the four top European operators in the flower and plant trade. What will be the next step?
In parallel with our floricultural trading activities we will pursue several production strategies, working simultaneously on other projects. In Switzerland, in the Ticino canton, we obtained the first permits from the town of Quinto to create a 10-hectare plant for rose production. In Bulgaria, on the other hand, we are undertaking initial feasibility studies for a new investment programme. This Balkan country has a well-established rose-growing tradition, although these are outdoor cultivations primarily destined to the perfume industry. There is the intention on our part to diversify traditional Bulgarian rose productions through the cultivation of cut flowers in greenhouses. We are and will remain growers of cut flowers, always innovation-savvy, also insofar as regards the energy field and its direct interactions with the floricultural sector. We will also continue to pay our usual degree of attention to the development of services that may be able to bring the consumer closer to the product.
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