Jongkind is a Dutch company that develops and produces high-quality substrates for professional growers in the Netherlands and other countries. Jongkind has an excellent reputation as a reliable family business (since 1908) and is synonymous with a high level of certainty. With Jongkind you know for sure that you’re ‘on solid ground’.
The company is currently run by Hendrik Jongkind, of the fourth generation in a row
Gijsbert Jongkind (08-05-1882 – † 25-07-1981)
Gijsbert Jongkind was the founder of the Aalsmeersche Kolen- en Friesche Mesthandel – a company focusing on coal and manure whose reputation extended beyond the town of Aalsmeer. In 1908 Gijsbert borrowed twenty guilders to buy the first plot of peatland in the Rietwijkeroorderpolder and started to sell the peat. Gijs soon switched from selling peat to coal, earning him the moniker “Coalman Gijs”. The company’s growth and prosperity in the 1920s went hand in hand with that of the (greenhouse) horticulture for which the town of Aalsmeer is famous. After coal, the company started selling oil. In the 1960s natural gas became available as a source of energy. That prompted the company to switch to trading soil and manure in 1968.
Jan Jongkind (13-11-1916 – † 15 oktober 2010)
On 31 August 1938 the company’s management had meanwhile been taken over by the family’s next generation, in the person of Jan Jongkind. In those days, too, growers were the company’s biggest customers. Under Jan’s leadership a sales combination of a group of local fuel dealers was set up. In quiet periods the staff would help growers in other ways, for example by mixing manure with peat and dredgings. In actual fact, these were the company’s first steps in its development towards a potting soil specialist.
Simon Jongkind (22-02-1940 – † 16 februari 2007)
In the 1960s the company continued to expand and was one of the first producers in the Netherlands to supply ready-made potting soil. Eventually the oil trade and the potting soil company were separated. This marked the birth, on 29 May 1964, of Jongkind Grond BV, which was from 1968 onwards managed by Simon Jongkind of the family’s third generation.
In addition to supplying ever more special varieties of potting soil, the company expanded its range with a remarkable new product in the 1970s: hydro granules. The contacts that Simon Jongkind had meanwhile established with exporters at the Aalsmeer flower auction helped him in his first efforts to export potting soil and clay granules.
Hendrik Jongkind (02-06-68)
Since 2007 Hendrik Jongkind of the fourth generation has been in charge of the family business, which now has more than eighty years’ experience in composing potting soil and clay-granule substrates for specific applications. And today, the company is still realising continuous improvements through innovation.
Jongkind’s many decades of experience in the various products and raw materials is evident from the quality of its current range. Thorough professionalisation in the top segment of substrates and growing media has earned Jongkind a strong reputation as a specialist in the field of tailor-made solutions in substrates and growing media for sowing, cuttings and propagating and growing a wide range of young plants.
On solid ground
All the Jongkind generations have shared an important characteristic that is greatly appreciated by the company’s customers, and that is best described by the saying “An honest man’s word is as good as his bond”. This aptly expresses the company’s number-one aim, i.e. to offer its customers certainty, solidity and reliability: ‘on solid ground’.