AGRICULTURE: Ecke Ranch sold to Dutch company
Interview with Paul Ecke III
Ecke Ranch, the iconic Encinitas nursery that created the international poinsettia industry, confirmed Thursday it has been sold to theAgribio Group, a Dutch plant breeder and propagator.
Agribio will keep the Ecke Ranch brand and name as a subsidiary, said CherylAnn Crysler, marketing manager for Ecke Ranch. Ecke Ranch is already listed as a subsidiary on Agribio’s website.
The deal is still subject to closing conditions, said Paul Ecke III, the company’s fourth-generation owner. Ecke declined to disclose the terms of the sale.
The Ecke Ranch’s 88 employees will keep their jobs, he said, and there are no plans for laying them off. Ecke himself is leaving the business.
The sale ends an era when three generations of Eckes built a large company in North County, and put Encinitas on the map at least once a year, at Christmastime. Ecke said the operations will continue under Agribio Group, which will benefit from the company’s research savvy and its marketing network in the United States.
At one time, Ecke Ranch, formerly called Paul Ecke Ranch, sold about 90 percent of the holiday plants in the United States. And while competition has reduced that number, the Ecke Ranch is still linked with poinsettias across the country and internationally. Most of its employees are now based outside the U.S., mainly in Guatemala.
Ecke said a combination of factors induced him to sell; among them, increasingly difficult competition, and the lack of a next-generation Ecke who was interested in carrying on the tradition.
Ecke, who will turn 57 next month, said he’s got a lot on his plate. First is completing the deal.
“I’ve got plenty of work to do,” Ecke said. “We signed a binding agreement, but it’s not closed. So first I have to get us to the finish line. ... Of course, we have a real estate company (Carltas) that I have always been involved with as a director, and maybe I’ll get more involved in the real estate business, who knows?
“Of course we still own the Flower Fields of Carlsbad, and I may get involved there,” he said. “And I’ve got an 11-year-old daughter that I probably will end up driving in more car pools than I did for our first. I’m not worried about being bored, let’s put it that way.”
Historic tradition
Ecke family roots run deep in Encinitas, where the company has been for nearly a century. An elementary school and a YMCA carry the Ecke name, testimony to the family’s multigenerational community involvement.
Albert Ecke, an immigrant from Germany, founded the company in Hollywood in 1906. His son, Paul Ecke Sr., moved it to Encinitas in the 1920s;. Ecke Sr. handed the company to his son, Paul Ecke Jr., and in 1991, Paul Ecke III took over.
Ecke Ranch had signed a deal in April to offer 67 acres to the Leichtag Foundation. The Jewish philanthropic organization exercisedthe option in May. That is a separate transaction from the sale.
Ecke has struggled in recent years to defend the company against growing competition from agricultural corporate giants. The company has long since shifted its growing to countries such as Guatemala, which have the advantage of lower labor costs and better growing climate.
But the Encinitas operation, which at one time covered 900 acres, has been the company’s headquarters since Paul Ecke relocated the business there more than 80 years ago.
Ecke said his company used to be considered a large one in floriculture, but now is considered small. That’s because of industry consolidation, he said, with competitors being swallowed up one by one by bigger companies.
The sale was first reported in an article in the trade magazine Greenhouse Product News.