Tauranga Firm Hits Gold With Black Calla Lily

Andy Warren of Bloomz

November 22, 2005

Tauranga Firm Hits Gold With Black Calla Lily

A Tauranga company has brought home a top international award for a unique black calla lily it bred and developed.

Bloomz New Zealand won the award for best flower from a bulb or tuber from the International Hortifair in Amsterdam for its patented variety Hot Chocolate®.

Managing Director, Andy Warren, said, "This award is recognition of a very special flower, and is a great launchpad for other new calla varieties. It also helps to maintain New Zealand's reputation for innovation and excellence in the flower export business. We're delighted."

This is the latest in a string of successes for Hot Chocolate® against top international competition. The flower's first major win was the award of merit at Royal Horticultural Society's world-famous Chelsea flower show in 2003, followed later that year by its first award from the International Hortifair. In 2004 it was voted best new fresh cut flower at the Wholesale Florist and Florist Supplier Association Floral Expo in Atlanta, USA.

ENDS

Note to editors:
1. Bloomz is a leading New Zealand floriculture company specializing in Zantedeschia (coloured calla lilies), Sandersonia and other exotic species such as Phormium. It breeds and produces high health tissue culture, bulbs and tubers and has established relationships with wholesale customers and commercial growers around the world. Bloomz is the only New Zealand bulb exporter fully accredited by the New Zealand Government Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry.

2. Hot Chocolate® is grown commercially in New Zealand as a cut flower and a pot plant.

3. The International Hortifair is the world's biggest horticulture trade show, held annually in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, at the hub of the global flower industry and attracting over 51,000 horticulture professionals from more than 100 countries.

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