Turmoil in "green" market

The news broke on 3 September like a bombshell: the garden centre company Europatuin, with 47 affiliated garden centres, had filed for bankruptcy. According to information from individual garden suppliers, some of the garden centres had got into financial difficulties owing to the poor season. However, the Europatuin head office in Woerden had taken on long-term rental guarantees for many member companies, which individual outlets then laid claim to, pushing Europatuin as a whole into insolvency. Some of the garden centres were still trading profitably, giving rise to the hope that Europatuin would continue to exist in some form.
16 former Europatuin operators have joined the Life & Garden franchise organisation.
In October the first details emerged regarding the survival of the speciality stores. Five members, who between them run ten stores, expressed an interest in acquiring the Europatuin name and engaged in serious negotiations with the administrator and the Europatuin managing director Jandt Batenburg, who operated two Europatuin stores of his own together with his son. Several of the other stores had already enquired of other garden centre chains – for example Tuinland (see PET in Europe 4/2004), Intratuin and VesaTuin – whether there was any possibility of affiliating with their stores. Industry insiders were expecting to see internal streamlining of the chain, which would then go ahead with a relaunch involving considerably fewer units.
Then things really began hotting up in December: Ed Maas, a property magnate in Wassenaar who has also courted controversy in the Netherlands on account of his political activities, bought the name Europatuin from the bankruptcy assets, together with the two stores in De Bilt and Zutphen, which were owned by Europatuin prior to the bankruptcy. Ed Maas and his property company VHS had already acted as a lender for these two stores. The question for many Europatuin operators now was whether they would join the new company. Ten stores in all, including the two owned by the company, belonged to Ed Mass’ new Europatuin Group in December, although he was still counting on up to 20 former Europatuin stores joining him.
The garden centre chain TuinWereld was established by six former Europatuin operators and has eight stores for the moment.
But the situation seems to have developed in an entirely different direction: the Europatuin store in Emmeloord has joined the Netherlands’ biggest garden centre chain Intratuin, with…