«Meet customers’ needs, giving high quality at fair price»
Raggi Vivai, started in Cesena in 1970 thanks to Giordano Raggi's brilliant idea and has carried on for 40 years until now.
We interviewed Danilo Bernandini, one of the company partners.
How has Raggi Vivai been growing over these 40 years?
«Raggi Vivai started its activity producing fruit plants (strawberry and kiwi) and rootstock. The main event which changed our company happened in the 80s when royalties for the strawberry plant patents started. Thanks to that, we began to look for new strawberry varieties, through genetic improvements, building a new company, named New Fruits, which created its first three strawberry varieties in the years between 1998 and 2002.
Since 2001/2002, when we marketed these varieties, Raggi Vivai plants production, which had decreased at first, flourished again reaching excellent results (over 20 hectares of strawberry nursery); we produce at the moment cold stored plants, plug plants and tray plants for professional division). Nowadays new varieties are continously requested, due to the rat race in the strawberry breeding. Moreover, since 1980 our company has also been working in the truffle cultivation (in 30 years of activity we have made more than 1500 hectares of new truffle orchard) and we have been producing excellent asparagus crowns as well for 14 years.»
How many divisions does the company have?
«In addition to the strawberry breeding, which serves our professional market and the truffle cultivation market, Raggi Vivai has created an important new division, dedicated to the gardening hobby (we have developed brands and leader products as “Fragolaviva”, “Asparago Superiore” and “Minituberi di Patate”). The gardening division supplies at the moment about 1.000 agricultural shops, garden centres, and distributors all over Italy and Europe. We also produce soft fruit plants for farmers and we have a department which supplies deep-freezing and logistic facilities.»
What is your goal and how do you try to accomplish it?
«Our client is always at the centre of the stage. Raggi Vivai company has one fundamental purpose: to meet our customers’ needs, giving high quality products at fair prices, and building serious and long relations. In order to do so we constantly train up our staff, reaching high quality.»
What are your major markets?
«At the moment our leading market is Europe but we are also starting with Russia, Ukraine and China. Talking about China, thanks to all our Raggi Vivai and New Fruits staff (another partner company) from 18th to 22nd of February 2012 we are going to Beijing to join the VII International Strawberry Symposium. There we will introduce all the results of our research activities. We are proud to have been asked to take part in the meeting and we consider this invitation a reward for all our efforts in improving the quality of our job.»
