Sakata Seed Southern Africa is celebrating its biggest Open Days event yet. In February 2020 Sakata hosted a four-day event at their Head Office in Lanseria, Johannesburg. Visitors included commercial vegetable producers, retailers, students, small-scale farmers as well as government officials from the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
Each visitor was welcomed at the registration desk, with a goody bag, a hat and a trial evaluation book, where they could make notes with regard to the product in the trial field. Visitors were then accompanied into the trial fields in groups where they had the opportunity to view the various crops. Sakata’s crop specialists were present in the field to showcase their products, share technical information and allow visitors to interact and ask questions.
Within the trial field, several new and exciting products caught the attention of vegetable producers and retailers, these included products like Bean, Tiezo* and Moraleda*; Tomato, Obus*; Cauliflower, Twister*; Broccoli, Ares* and Triton*; Pepper, Delisha*, Cherokee and Autry; Cabbage, Superslam; and Butternut, Titan.
Sakata also had the privilege of welcoming H.E. Mr. Norio Maruyama, the Ambassador, Embassy of Japan in the RSA, to the Open Days. The Ambassador addressed the visitors in a short speech where he told a mesmerizing personal story about him, and his wife and how they love gardening. Accompanied by Sakata’s Managing Director, Mr. Lindsay Campleman, the Ambassador also took a walk through the trial field and paid special interest to the Sakata butternut varieties as well as the professional flowers that were displayed in the field. He ended his visit by taking a short tour through Sakata’s state-of-the-art seed processing facilities where some of the seed cleaning processes were demonstrated.
The total amount of people that visited the Sakata Open days over the four-day period came to about 600. Sakata is proud to state that the quantity of visitors seems to increase with every Open day event that gets hosted and the quality of the event is also going from strength to strength. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers for their loyal support. Look out for the invitation to our next Open day event that will take place early in 2022.
