Sjaak Bakker is a seasoned innovator in the horticulture industry, and in particular in the world of plant propagation, with a breadth of knowledge that spans continents and cultures.
Bakker founded HortiConnect in 2016 with Plantanova founder Pharis Rico with the aim of facilitating direct contacts between Dutch technology companies and Mexican propagators and greenhouse growers.
The company, which recently opened a dedicated office in The Netherlands’ World Horti Center, effectively acts as a cross-continental bridge, enabling Dutch companies to work in Mexico and Mexican companies to find the right technology supplier for their needs.
In 2024, Bakker founded DigiVation, a new venture designed to bring digital and VR-based learning and training to propagators and growers worldwide in collaboration with Netherlands-based technology suppliers. He also serves as a member of the Plantanova Advisory Board.
In the second of the Plantanova Interviews, Sjaak explains how he came to work with Plantanova and shares his vision for where he sees Mexican horticulture going next.
How did you first become aware of Plantanova?
Sjaak Bakker (SB): I first met Pharis when I was working for Flier Systems in the young plant industry. Pharis was one of the first innovators in the Mexican industry and the first to invest in high-end, automated sowing line. He was always looking for the right technology and Plantanova has become one of the early adopters of cutting-edge technologies in the market.
What should you bear in mind when bringing new technologies to Mexico?
SB: Dutch suppliers have very good innovations, but you always have to check to make sure we can implement them in real surroundings. For example, when we supplied our sowing line to Pharis, it was obvious his people weren’t experienced in automation at all. This meant we had to give a lot of attention to the learning curve, so we put together a teaching document to guide them through the process.
Therefore, when you are delivering new equipment, you need to also understand how to guide the onboarding and provide after-sales service. If you are not aware of these kinds of local requirements, that will negatively impact on your overall performance.
Can you tell us about the work of DigiVation?
SB: DigiVation develops and delivers scalable digital instruction solutions by bringing together experts and highly-detailed illustrations to create instructional videos. This method transforms complex procedures into accessible, structured knowledge — ideal for onboarding, training and remote support.
We further make use of Virtual Reality (VR) tech for technical training and remote assistance. These types of visual aides will become more and more important in our whole way of living.
Where do you see the opportunities for Dutch companies in Mexico?
We are seeing a lot of growth in the protected agriculture industry in Mexico with a rise of 400% since 2004. It started with some low-tech shadehouses; now there’s a lot of professional growing facilities.
You also have to take into consideration other factors such as the increasing wages for the people who work in the greenhouses – they are rising by 20% each year – and the fact that professional growers are demanding a much higher quality product.
If plants are not up to your expectations, it directly affects your yield, so that’s a good reason to create a more professional production environment. This means there is a huge opportunity to support the Mexican industry in the sourcing of technologies to become more professional.
However, this is one important caveat: in order to achieve successful implementation, you need to have local expertise. No matter how sophisticated you are as a technology company, it is always valuable to be able to count on local knowledge.
Saying that, there are also opportunities to support customers in Mexico remotely, and this is where VR comes in.
If your machinery goes down, you have a serious problem because the planning is very tight for young plants. DigiVation makes sure the right technical knowledge is available to meet a company’s technical needs, even if the expert is based in the Netherlands.
