“Having an insurance company like Hortica at its side was a plus for Pleasant View Gardens”
We strongly believe that having an insurance agent that specializes in your industry is a benefit for business owners. But, to go a step further, having an insurance carrier to specialize in your industry is an added bonus. Our Risk Advisors understand your exposures but the carrier we are placing you with only works with your type of business. That's a true competitive advantage.
Below is an article written after a greenhouse grower lost some of his greenhouses due to a fire right before spring. You could imagine the panic experienced before his busiest season.
“Having an insurance company like Hortica at its side was a plus for Pleasant View Gardens”
A January fire at Pleasant View Gardens threatened the grower's spring, but a mighty fast rebuild and the right supporting cast kept the operation on track.
“You have that panic feeling, and my first real reaction was what are we going to do?” says Huntington, owner of Pleasant View Gardens. “How does this affect us? How’s it going to affect our customers?”
“The building contained our pesticide room – our mixing and storage facility for all our chemicals,” Huntington says. “We had just bought our inventory of chemicals – probably $100,000 worth – and we lost them.”
The greenhouse that caught fire was the first gutter-connected house Pleasant View built, and it was about 25 years old. It was, however, connected to the newest greenhouse. “The fire stopped at the connector before getting to the newer house,” Huntington says. “Nothing was separating it. There was an acrylic roof on the greenhouse that burned. The connector had polycarbonate – it really doesn’t burn, it melts. It was just amazing it stopped.
The Pleasant View fire was a major inconvenience, yes, but Huntington says the recovery process has been a smooth one. One exception in the process was the chemical cleanup following Pleasant View’s estimated $100,000 loss.
“We had to get an environmental cleanup company to come in and get that stuff dealt with and picked up,” Huntington says. “That part of the building had to be cleaned up by professionals.
Although cleanup was a time-consuming process, Huntington says having an insurance company like Hortica at its side was a plus for Pleasant View.
“Kudos to Hortica,” he says. “No one likes buying insurance, but they know the industry. Some people may believe they can get a better policy someplace else. But I’ll tell you: It’s times like these you’re so thankful you’re working with a company that specializes in our industry.”
Article from Greenhousegrower.com
