La Gaitana Farms is a grower of top quality carnations and spray carnations, located in the Savanna of Bogota, Colombia. We started in 1984 and have expanded to a current growing area of 25 hectares and 300 employees. Our products are sent to some of the most demanding customers in Europe, Japan and the United States.
Our  company began with growing carnations, roses and spray carnations. In 1993, an additional piece of land was bought, which expanded the growing area. In 2003, more land was acquired and additional greenhouses were built to meet the market demand. Today there is still land available for additional expansion.
A state-of-the-art post harvesting warehouse with coolers were built in 2005. The area is 2,300 m2. The roof and walls are isolated panels, to guarantee a temperature of 15 degrees Celsius year round.
In 2007, we decided to focus solely on carnations and spray carnations, as this is where we excel in quality!

Flowers by Sea Container
In 2008, La Gaitana Farms started to experiment with the transport of flowers by sea container. Several trials were carried out and towards the end of 2008 various 40’ reefers containing carnations and mini carnations were shipped to Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The results are excellent and the vase life of the flowers exceeded expectations. Nowadays, sea container shipments are carried out on a weekly basis.
The aforementioned is a result of proper management of the maturity stage of the harvested flowers, botrytis control and post harvest treatments like pre cooling, chemicals, disinfection and packaging in special boxes.
During the Hortifair 2008 in Amsterdam, the flowers that had arrived by sea container were exhibited and caused an impact amongst the visitors because of the freshness they displayed.
In an ever increasing demand for environmentally friendly products, flowers by sea are the preferred choice of supermarkets in Europe. On average, the CO2 emission of an airplane is 53 times that of an ocean going vessel when transporting the same amount over the same distance. Although flowers by air will remain an important option, the amount of flowers transported by sea container, will increase in the future.

Post Harvest
In 2005 La Gaitana Farms expanded it´s postharvest, flower-treatment and cooler facilities. The end result: A higher quality product. In addition, due to packaging taking place entirely in the cooler, the installations are ideally suitable for flowers that are to be transported by sea container.