Industry benchmarking gives Living Colour Nursery a competitive edge

You can get an advantage, too

South Australia’s largest seedling wholesaler, Living Colour Nursery, is reaping the benefits of participating in a project designed to benchmark the industry and boost confidence in decision-making.

Now, we’re urging you to participate in the Nursery industry statistics project.

With your input, the data and insights can keep informing key decision-making at both nursery and industry levels. In this way, we can grow the sector.

 What is the Nursery industry statistics project?

The project output is the nursery benchmarking tool. This helps nursery business owners and managers measure how their business compares, competes and 'benchmarks' against others in terms of revenue, volume, productivity, wages and business sentiment.

From 2018 to 2021, NY21000 Nursery industry statistics 2017/18 to 2019/20 (delivered by Nursery & Garden Industry Australia) produced a detailed yearly snapshot of the size, value, production and employment of greenlife in Australia.

The project also delivered an updated nursery benchmarking tool and a political, economic, social, technological, legislative and environmental (PESTLE) scan of the greenlife industry operating environment to support strategic planning at both business and industry levels.

How the tool helps Living Colour Nursery

Living Colour Nursery employs more than 40 people and has contributed to the project's data collection component since it started in 2018.

Ashley Burns, General Manager of Living Colour Nursery, finds the tool valuable and easy-to-use in his operations. He says the information bank provides important insights into the wider industry. 

By analysing data, Living Colour Nursery better understands its position within the industry and makes informed and strategic decisions.

“The tool provides my leadership team with the confidence to make decisions. It backs up some of the thoughts and feelings that we’ve had and gives us the extra confidence to roll with the decisions we had in the pipeline,” Ashley says.

Ashley also recognises the value for the broader sector.

“It had been assumed that we are a unique cottage industry run by family businesses, but from our perspective, the industry is filled with serious production facilities that employ many people,” Ashley says, “and now we have the data to back that up, which is of huge benefit when engaging with stakeholders.”

How the tool can help you

The tool can helps Australian nurseries understand in which areas they are similar to their peers and how they differ.

This information can be key to forming short, medium and long-term business strategies. Importantly, the tool displays segmented data so growers can benchmark their business against those of similar size and scale.

Additional benefits include: 

• informing levy funded RD&E investments, supporting more effective RD&E outcomes
• informing data-driven policy development for the nursery industry, generating more effective policy outcomes.

How you can participate

Living Colour Nurseries plans to contribute to this project each year they know that the more accurate and complete the data is, the better it will be for the entire industry.

To participate in this project, visit the project website at www.horticulture.com.au/growers/help-your-business-grow/research-reports-publications-fact-sheets-and-more/ny21000

The tool

The tool is available for use by Nursery Industry levy payers only. If you’re a production nursery and you would like to access the tool can contact Celeste Cook via the button below. You can also contact Celeste if you want to get involved in the project.

• If you missed our recent webinar about the tool or would like to view it again, visit: www.greenlifeindustry.com.au/webinar-recording-nibt-2023
• To view our short video on how to use the tool, visit: www.greenlifeindustry.com.au/webinar-benchmarking-tool

Request the tool

More info

For more information, email GIA Extension Officer Celeste Cook at celeste.cook@greenlifeindustry.com.au

NY21000 Nursery industry statistics 2017/18 to 2019/20 was funded by Hort Innovation, using the nursery research and development levy and contributions from the Australian Government. This case study was developed as part of MT21015 Horticulture impact assessment program 2020-21 to 2022-23, funded by Hort Innovation, using research and development levies from across horticulture, and contributions from the Australian Government.

Hort Innovation is the grower-owned, not-for-profit research and development corporation for Australian horticulture. For more information visit www.horticulture.com.au