Growing together

If you’ve ever won­dered how a fall mum arrives at your local gar­den cen­ter, Travis Knoop has a sim­ple descrip­tion.

“A well thought out exe­cutable plan mixed with oper­a­tional inge­nu­ity,” says Knoop, chief facil­i­ty offi­cer for Metroli­na Green­hous­es’ York facil­i­ty.

Metroli­na is one of the nation’s largest hor­ti­cul­tur­al oper­a­tions, with more than 200 acres under glass and over 200 acres of out­door pro­duc­tion at three loca­tions in Huntersville, North Car­oli­na, York and Spring­field, Ten­nessee. Metroli­na’s York facil­i­ty, which com­pris­es the major­i­ty of the oper­a­tion’s out­door pro­duc­tion, is locat­ed just a few min­utes from York Electric’s main office.

Dur­ing its peak sea­son, the company’s York facil­i­ty loads as many as 1,600 ship­ping carts every day. Plants are shipped to 1,600 gar­den cen­ters in 19 states. Metroli­na Green­hous­es’ two-loca­tion omnichan­nel e‑commerce busi­ness also ful­fills online orders in all 50 states for its three main customers—Walmart, Lowe’s and Home Depot. Before they fill a flowerbed or bright­en a front porch, each plant pro­duced at Metroli­na’s York loca­tion begins its jour­ney in a green­house pow­ered by the reli­able elec­tric­i­ty pro­vid­ed by York Elec­tric.

Metroli­na has always been a fam­i­ly­owned busi­ness. Its founders, Vick­ie and Tom Van­Winger­den, came to the Unit­ed States from the Nether­lands with just $5,000 and a dream of build­ing their own green­house busi­ness. Start­ing with a small facil­i­ty in Huntersville, North Car­oli­na in 1972, the Van­Winger­dens grew the busi­ness into one of the nation’s largest  green­house oper­a­tions. The com­pa­ny expand­ed into York Coun­ty in 2013, dou­bling Metrolina’s total acreage and estab­lish­ing a major grow­ing oper­a­tion in York Electric’s ser­vice area.

Today, the York cam­pus spans over 200 hun­dred acres and grows more than 600 vari­eties of plants. Around 150 full­time employ­ees work at the facil­i­ty year-round, and anoth­er 100 sea­son­al employ­ees join the team dur­ing the busy spring sea­son.

“You can have a game plan for the week,” Knoop says, “but it can change every day,” adding that flex­i­bil­i­ty is essen­tial in the greenhouse’s dai­ly oper­a­tions.

Weath­er fore­casts, cus­tomer orders and grow­ing con­di­tions can change fre­quent­ly, so Metrolina’s team has to be adapt­able to change. A warm spring in one region or unex­pect­ed rain in anoth­er can quick­ly change where prod­ucts are need­ed. While cus­tomers see a full gar­den cen­ter of healthy plants, Metroli­na works behind the scenes to make the most of avail­able resources.

Metroli­na cap­tures, cleans and reuses rain­wa­ter through a com­plex water recla­ma­tion sys­tem. The York cam­pus fea­tures a reten­tion pond that can hold more than 100 mil­lion gal­lons of water, enough to fill about 150 Olympic sized swim­ming pools. Instead of rely­ing just on new water sources, the com­pa­ny recy­cles rain­wa­ter through a fil­tra­tion sys­tem for irri­ga­tion uses.

Envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship con­tin­ues with Metrolina’s grow­ing process. Staff intro­duce ben­e­fi­cial insects that nat­u­ral­ly con­trol harm­ful pests, reduc­ing the need for pes­ti­cides. Metrolina’s com­pa­ny-wide recy­cling ini­tia­tive keeps more than 4 mil­lion pounds of plas­tic pots and trays out of land­fills each year by work­ing with retail­ers to col­lect and reuse mate­ri­als.

Inno­va­tion has always been cen­tral to Metrolina’s suc­cess. “If you don’t inno­vate, you stag­nate,” Van­Winger­den often said, an out­look that still steers the busi­ness today. Auto­mat­ed con­vey­ers and irri­ga­tion sys­tems help employ­ees work more effi­cient­ly, but Metrolina’s employ­ees con­tin­ue to make the dif­fer­ence, accord­ing to Direc­tor of Labor Tim Brind­ley.

“You can nev­er replace the human touch,” says Brind­ley.

York Elec­tric has pow­ered Metrolina’s local cam­pus for more than a decade, sup­port­ing the company’s growth, inno­va­tion and respon­si­ble prac­tices. Near­ly every aspect of Metrolina’s oper­a­tion requires depend­able elec­tri­cal ser­vice, from auto­mat­ed irri­ga­tion sys­tems to keep plants healthy to spe­cial light­ing that reg­u­lates bloom­ing cycles.

The part­ner­ship reflects the coop­er­a­tive mod­el at work— reli­able pow­er helps busi­ness­es like Metroli­na thrive, and, in turn, those busi­ness­es cre­ate jobs and strength­en the local econ­o­my.

Knoop and Brind­ley say that York Elec­tric is more than just an elec­tric provider.

“When we need some­thing, York Elec­tric reacts quick­ly,” Brind­ley says. “There’s always a real per­son on the oth­er end of the line when we call. They deliv­er on what they promise.”