How Changing Your Greenhouse Liner Trays Can Lead to Cost Savings

Posted by Brian Sparks|July 25, 2018

Greenhouse Grower recently asked Tom Smith of Four Star Greenhouse in Carleton, MI, about the steps the company has taken to help with cost and labor savings over the past year. Here’s one strategy Smith recommends:

“We’ve put a lot of new automation in. We’ve bought transplanters, spacing equipment, shearing equipment, subirrigation floors, and more. But I’d have to say the biggest gamechanger, which we’ve invested a fair amount of time and money into over the last two years, was converting our liner trays from 84s to 104s. That’s going to help us keep our costs down, drive overhead down, and reduce shipping to our customers, without having any effect on the customer’s quality and crop time.

“The new trays we’re using have 104 plants per tray in the same space as 84 plants were in the tray before. We’ve found that by eliminating a lot of the edging of the tray, we actually can spread out and use more space in the tray. The size of the spacing and the soil volume are very close to our 84 tray size. That’s how we maintain the crop quality and have the same crop time for pinching and treating the same as we do with an 84. What that allows us to do is to keep our overhead down so we can get 20% more in our greenhouse, but we’re handling 20% fewer plants.

“This past year, we didn’t raise prices on anyone that wanted to go from an 84 to a 104, and we landed them a cheaper price, even though some freight prices went up a little bit this year. We did all of this without any crop quality or crop timing issues.

“Anytime we can bring costs down for a customer and not affect any quality or timing issues or disrupt their production, I consider that a huge win. The equipment is great, too, but many times you have to spend a lot of money to try to keep your costs down and flat, or not raise your prices as much because you’re still trying to pay for your equipment and offset some other price increases. But with this change, especially on freight, it’s a direct, immediate 20% savings for our customers.”