Mark Portman, Managing Director of UK & Ireland at Evergreen Garden Care, told GTN Xtra: "The demand for growing media is huge, it's astronomical, and we're doing everything we can. We are producing seven days a week. We're running our shifts on maximum capacity but we have to respect the new health and safety measures in place on social distancing. We will prioritize the safety of our teams as the number one priority, unapologetically.
"We have focused on producing six sku's in as high volumes as we can. And that's what we're supplying to our customers. We are saying no to new business opportunities just to continue to focus on getting as much product into the loyal customers, we've had for so many years.
"We've got about a three week lead time on orders and we're working hard to bring that forward and shorten it.
“We’ve seen the Coronavirus pandemic impacting the gardening industry severely since early March. With garden centres now able to reopen, we face a new challenge and that is the unprecedented consumer demand, for growing media in particular. There’s never been such a high demand, because the UK’s passion for gardening is skyrocketing.
"We are doing everything we can to support our customers in meeting this demand, while also ensuring the safety of our team as our priority. We’ve been implementing the new social distancing guidelines across all three of our manufacturing plants and introduced new shift patterns to ensure we are producing the maximum amount of product that we can – that’s both our growing media plants working seven days a week with multiple shifts in place.
"We’ve prioritised our growing media product range for the time being, to focus on a core number of products to help us meet our customer orders. Where we may not have full availability of our range, we are offering alternative products, whether that’s different pack sizes, formats, variants or brands. We have extended lead times in terms of delivery and are working to reduce them, our sales team are focused on keeping customers in the loop to ensure we’re working together through this challenging time.
"Our other categories including plant food, pest and disease control and weedkillers are all at normal production and we have good stock levels across these. We expect to see uplifts across these categories as the summer continues and the new gardening fans expand their knowledge and look for prevention and solutions for common issues around their gardens.
"We’re delighted to see the majority of customers now open again and seeing such a huge demand from shoppers, for growing media products in particular. We’ll continue working with our customers to support them in meeting this demand. It’s not going to be a straightforward journey as the nation adjusts to life post-lockdown, but we are looking to the future. We want to continue to service our customers as effectively as possible and support the gardening industry as a whole.”