The Ethio-Horti Share Company (EHSC) which is formed by 30 floriculture companies bought 800tn of fertilizer worth 500,000 dollars from Yara, a multi-national fertilizer producer, and 700,000 dollars worth of chemicals from German supplier, SYNGENTA.

The fertilizer and chemicals to be used for the floriculture industry partially arrived into the country last week.
 

The floriculture industry has become the favourite industry and one of the prime sectors supported by the Ethiopian government. 
 

Two years ago only 30 companies were involved in flower farming. Currently 90 companies do so. Out of these, 46 companies have started exporting, already earning 21 million euros last year and projected to earn 40-50 million euros this year.
 

EHSC was founded in October 2004 to facilitate the transporting of export products. Instead of each grower taking their products to the airport, the company facilitates the export process as an agent for the growers. The idea of coming together as a company was initiated by the national carrier, Ethiopian Airlines.
 

EHSC collects information from each grower and negotiates the cargo price and facilitate the export using Ethiopian Airlines, earning between 0.05 dollars and  0.10 dollars per kilogram for the service.
 

Last year, the company decided to begin importing products for the floriculture industry. A company official told Fortune that it collected price quotations selecting fertilizers and chemicals before it signed a purchase agreement with Yara, a multi-national fertilizer factory in August, 2005.
 

Tsegaye Abebe, Board member of the EHSC and President Ethiopia Horticulture Producers and Exporters Association told Fortune that “as the floriculture sector needs a careful assessment when choosing the right products. It took us a year and a half to reach a decision.”
 

Yara, which has fertilizer factories all over the world, has started to send fertilizer into the country beginning from the first week of October, 2006.
 

Yara also markets gases and Nitrogen based chemicals, mostly in the form of upgraded co-products from fertilizer production factories. It has a global marketing network across all continents with local activities in 50 countries and sales in more than 120 countries.
 

“EHSC is not formed as a profit making firm,” said Tsegaye. “It rather acts as an agent for the flower growers to import fertilizers through one channel instead of each company spending time and money individually.”
 

Though Tsegaye said that it acts as a cooperative, the company gets up to 10pc profit from the fertilizers and chemicals imported into the country.
 

“As the profit will directly go to the growers who own the company, we still can call it a cooperative” said Tsegaye.
 

The fertilizer and chemicals which are being imported will be enough for a period of three to four months and another shipment will be bought before the present stock finishes.
 

Sources disclosed that EHSC got 25pc of the money for the purchase from Dashen Bank on loan.   

A senior official in the Ministry of Trade and Industry told Fortune he is happy that growers are cooperating through EHSC.
 

“The company knows better how to select the right quality and price for its colleagues in the industry,” said the official.

An importer of pesticides and herbicides chemicals was not quite as happy about the EHSC new venture. “It is selfish to meddle into the work of other people,” he said. “It is when everybody participates in their own sector that a country grows, not when people go beyond their expertise.”