Company History Timeline
Cool Timeline
Cedar Hill Corporate Group is founded in Obi Obi, on the Sunshine Coast in QLD, as Cedar Hill Orchids, with the aim of supplying cut flower orchids to the Japanese market.
The business starts harvesting native foliages goanna claw, koala fern and emu feather under licence from local areas in Mapleton and Poona.
It expands into umbrella fern and steel grass harvesting, and sets up Australian Flora Corporation, to sell these foliages to European markets.
A shipment of contaminated substrate wipes out the entire orchid crop, forcing the business to trade totally in native cut foliages. The business changes its name to Cedar Hill Flowers & Foliage to reflect this move, and focuses on supplying Europe.
The company outgrows its original Obi Obi premises, and relocates to a purpose-built state-of-the-art facility in Woombye, QLD. This move allows the business to diversify into other horticultural industries. A hothouse is built; and a new business set up, Australian Plant Specialists, to sell Christmas bush (Ceratopetalum) to growers. This business evolves into a wholesale tubestock nursery.
A tissue culture laboratory is started to conduct research into growing Australian native foliages. Now known as VitroFlora, the business supplies commercial volumes of tissue culture to the horticultural industry.
The fallout from the Global Financial Crisis forces the foliage business, Cedar Hill Flowers & Foliage, to seek a more diverse market. Premium Greens Australia is created as the sales vehicle for these markets, and all trading in foliages is now under that company name. As a result the business is now a truly global concern, selling into Japan, South Korea, China, USA, Canada and across Europe and the Middle East.
Cedar Hill Plantations is established to trial growing umbrella fern commercially outside of the rainforest biome. Today, it is the motherstock farm for Australian Plant Specialists tubestock, and a farm for cut foliages for Premium Greens Australia.
A downturn in the wholesale nursery industry prompts the creation of Australian Plants Online, to sell tubestock plants previously only available to the trade, direct to consumers, via the internet.
Thirty-plus years since that small start in Obi Obi, the Group has developed into one of the major horticultural businesses in Australia, and continues to operate in foliage and flower export, tissue culture breeding, wholesale tubestock supply, and direct-to-consumer retail.