Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard
Harvey,
I'm not making a comparison. I am stating that the product can be made cheaper. The ingredients are available in bulk from refineries of terrestrial and oceanic plants. Perhaps it is the case that Grow More buys these in larger quantities and hence cheaper. Use the information as you wish.
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Richard, I'd truly appreciate to know the suppliers of raw materials, especially the certified organically-processed melaleuca oil. We buy our pre-processed materials in bulk all over the planet, the cheapest we can get to help reduce prices... the most expensive so far is melaleuca and we are starting a process of feasibility of raising our own melaleuca crops to lower the prices.
From eight years of introduction and trials (from a different company), we haven't changed much our prices because we are fossil-fuel free, and are only affected by the shipping and processing energy prices. From eight years ago, the oil prices have a net increase, sending the conventional petroleum-derived fungicides and insecticides to within our mostly unaffected price range per potency (computation based on total price used per unit of land, AZ41 versus other conventional inputs to do the same job). And most of all, being a gateway to organic growing or having pesticide-free products is a major advantage to small start-up companies like us.
Some fungicides are more expensive than us, comparing fungicide versus AZ41 in grapes. But grapes has other inputs such as nematicides and insecticides.
With raisin grapes for example, we usually compare total use of fertilizers, fungicides, nematicides, insecticides per unit acre farmed versus fertilizers plus AZ41. Then we also compare revenues, yield vs yield, and final pricing at the packing houses. The raisin products by our users have earned top dollars based on premium quality, and so much more if our grower is in the CCOF program.
We can't openly publish farmers personal data but suffice it to say that they have been repeat customers and are very satisfied with the overall bottom line performance of AZ41. That is why we have also purchased a 20-acre farm parcel in Visalia, for our test and show case and can have published data sometime next year where we can show real numbers.
We have recently penetrated blueberry growers in California. The initial trials produced bigger berries and excellent control of root rot. So one of our plant nutritionist is assisting a big grower, reformulating the existing blueberry nutrition. That is an information that we cannot share, except on the general idea of how much AZ41 was used.
One of the complaints of some of our farmers is that when they used AZ41 on their vegetables is that they produced oversized lettuce heads, eggplants, tomatoes, zucchinis, gourds, etc., that don't fit with their normal boxes. They now are using bigger sized boxes or are readjusting to lower their fertilizer use. They now get multiple crops of eggplants and peppers.