Company putting the final touches on a major expansion into Beamsville
By Luke Edwards
Given the fact that he’s planning out years in advance to get his product to market, the last thing Michael Pang wants to see is his orchids flame out shortly after they get into the hands of a customer.
Pang, who grows somewhere between 1.5 to 2 million orchids a year for distribution to wholesalers and eventually customers across North America, worked with Vineland Research and Innovation Centre to showcase how his method - using moss as a substrate instead of the conventional bark - can lengthen the time customers get to enjoying the flowers.
“People only know bark (the conventional substrate), they don’t know moss. But it’s something that we need to educate the customer,” said Pang from his newly built Beamsville greenhouse.
FROM SUPERMARKETS TO SUPER GREENHOUSES
Born in Taiwan, Pang and his family moved to Argentina in his youth, before settling in Canada in 1991. For the next decade his father Luis ran a series of supermarkets and restaurants. At the turn of the millennium, however, the seeds of an orchid business took root. Around that time Pang said the phalaenopsis orchids - the kind grown in Taiwan - were beginning to increase in popularity.
In 2005 Luis bought a greenhouse in Milton, and the family switched from supermarkets and restaurants to greenhouse operators. About a decade later Luis retired, and his son took over.
The company is called New Pao Tau Enterprises, but Pang has lately been marketing his flowers as Casa Orchids.
The company grew from its early days where they were producing around 350,000 plants a year, to now upwards of 2 million. As they grew, Pang said they began renting out greenhouse space in Niagara. Then a couple years ago they began building on a plot of land on John Street. Plants started going into the 50,000-square-foot greenhouse just before Christmas.
Pang said he spared no expense, taking a page out of his father’s book by building a state-of-the-art greenhouse. At the time, he said the Milton greenhouse Luis first operated out of “was considered one of the really high end greenhouses that was built.”
Now, the new building has all the newest technologies, including new fogging, lighting and cooling systems, diffused glass, different types of shading, and a benching system. He also recycles water to both save money and help the environment.
“We’re trying to be as green as possible,” he said.
BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE
Pang’s work with VRIC helps give evidence to something he’s long believed: That moss is better than bark.
VRIC’s Plant Responses and the Environment team ran indoor research trials that compared moss and bark-based substrates at bloom stages of 100, 50 and zero per cent. They also compared three levels of irrigation - none, light and optimal, to get a sense of how it affects leaf thickness, number of buds and flowers, chlorophyll content and overall structure of the plant.
“Results suggested that the water retention abilities of moss have a significant impact on plant health, reflected by leaf thickness. Even without irrigation, the moss-grown plants maintained leaf thickness and their overall healthier appearance was more likely to make them more appealing to the consumers compared to the plants grown in bark,” reads a post in VRIC’s spring newsletter about the research. It goes on to say flowers grown in moss were, on average, 97 per cent larger than their bark-grown counterparts.
“For the consumer, orchids are a difficult plant to care for. Ensuring that the orchids are grown in the best material with optimal care instructions is critical for their longevity. Understanding if there are new technologies which can improve plant health is an innovative way to support the industry,” said Nicole De Long, director of business and client development at Vineland.
Pang is now planning to use that research to improve on marketing his plants.
SOMETIMES ORCHIDS NEED A LITTLE NEGLECT
The time frame for Pang’s orchids from seed to sale is roughly three years. It starts overseas in a greenhouse the company uses in Taiwan. They’re then transported to Canada in shipping containers to be finished off in a greenhouse here.
“If they can spend 40 days in the container without water, coming from Taiwan to here, why are we feeding the crap out of them?” Pang said.
Instead, orchids need only to be watered once every couple of weeks.
In the far corner of his new greenhouse is a collection of crossbred orchids Pang and his team are growing to come up with a new variety unique to the company. Some of those plants, Pang said, have been blooming for six months or more.
Proper care, and the benefits of moss, he argues, can ensure orchids at home last longer than many people are used to.
Pang jokes that sometimes orchids need a little neglect and abuse.
PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE
The five-month finishing time for orchids in Canada is only a small part of the overall growth period before they’re customer ready.
“From tissue cultures they spend the first 13 months in Taiwan before being shipped in a container,” he said.
“Then it’s a five-month finish here.”
Developing new varieties, a project the team has been working on to give Casa Orchids something entirely unique in the market, is even longer. Pang hopes to get a new variety out sometime next year, which would be the culmination of about seven years of work.
Pang gives an example of just how tedious it can be. Say he crossbreeds a pink and a white. Six months later the pod has somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 seeds. He can’t do all the seeds, so picks maybe 500 to 1,000. From there he grows them and judges how the flower is, how the leaf looks and overall performance of the plant.
“Sometimes you might do it and there’s zero out of that patch that you did,” he said.
“If we can get one out of that, it’s good.”
Nevertheless, the team is continuing the work, with a goal of having a new variety out by the end of next year.
PINKS AND PURPLES GAINING IN POPULARITY
While the classic white orchid remains the most popular, Pang said customers are starting to favour flowers with a little more colour, especially around certain holidays.
Valentine’s and Mother’s Day, for instance, sees customers looking for orchids that are pink and purple.
Market shifts make the long process of growing orchids all the more challenging.
However, Pang said he still focuses on combining quality and quantity, while staying at a price that his buyers are comfortable with.
“Yeah, I’m a factory, but I want to produce a Rolls Royce,” he said.
The goal is to grow as many orchids as possible with a double spike, which are valued more in the market. Pang cautions, though, that it’s not an exact science.
“They’re not made by a machine where we press a button. We can’t force it,” he said.
THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT, AND NOT JUST THE FLOWERS
Pang is already contemplating expansion to his Beamsville location. If he keeps growing at his current pace, it’ll be an inevitability, but he won’t rush to it.
Originally, the company included the entire family, with dad Luis, brother Steven and mom Susan all involved. With Luis nearing retirement, some fresh ideas were required. And given how stressful owning a business can be, having Pang as the sole operator helped ease some of those potential tensions.
Pang credits his staff with being the glue that keeps the business together. He said he tries to treat them right, knowing that without their hard work, Casa Orchids wouldn’t be a success.
Back home, Pang said he keeps a few orchids in his house, but mostly just brings home a few of the especially unique ones.
However, he always has some white orchids at home as well. His wife, much like the market, still has a soft spot for the classic white.
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