In 2025, we celebrated Botanicoir’s 20th anniversary. Founded in 2005, our humble family business has developed alongside, and helped influence, the growing global popularity of coir substrate.
We’ve become a market-leading supplier through hard work, strong partnerships with industry experts, support from a diligent team and close relationships with growers from around the world. Come with us, as we reminisce over the past 20 years, celebrating key milestones and thanking those who have helped us get this far.
Kalum, Samantha and Chaminda Balasuriya, Founders
Key touch points in Botanicoir’s story have helped us level up and hit exciting milestones. Achieved through collaborations with other like-minded businesses and regularly launching new products tailored to growers’ needs, our coir products are being used in over 60 countries across the world, helping provide the global population with a reliable source of healthy, delicious fruit and vegetables. Here are some of our favourite highlights so far.
Botanicoir was founded in 2005 by family team, Kalum, Samantha and Chaminda Balasuriya.
We became a primary sponsor of local orphanage (2005- to date), originally set up for children who lost their parents after the devastating tsunami of 2004.
We first entered into the European tomato market, supplying the largest tomato grower in Spain at the time with coco coir.
We introduced the compressed buffered grow bags into the UK soft fruit market, selling our first product to UK strawberry growers, Richard and Vernon Emery based near the new Forest.
Agrovista joins us as our UK partner, working closely with head of fruit, Mark Davies, and we soon become one of the most popular grower choices for strawberry growbags in the UK.
As demand for coir grew, we proudly opened our new production facility having outgrown the previous space, and offering a more comfortable working environment for our team.
The launch of Precision Plus grade mix for soft fruit production was launched after years of grower trials, feedback and development. The precise mix is developed with specific grading and buffering techniques and the new bag offered longevity due to its stable structure.
Kicking off a long-standing tradition, we invited our first cohort of loyal customers to Sri Lanka to see our facilities.
Friends and customers, New Forest Fruits, put our Precision Plus Ultra mix into commercial trials, followed by other leading growers in the UK.
Botanicoir became the first coir substrate manufacturer to install an advanced wastewater treatment plant in Sri Lanka, addressing environmental damage from calcium nitrate used to remove harmful elements that impact plant growth.
Implementation of the industry first mechanical dryer of its kind, ensuring more consistency of products and on-time delivery.
Our specialist soft fruit mix, Precision Plus Ultra launches at Fruit Focus with a special visit by Hon. DEFRA minister George Eustice.
As demand for our coco coir solutions continues to rise, we expand production facilities in south India.
We launched our first bio-degradable plastic for grow bags and Open Top Containers, enabling growers to choose a more eco-friendly option.
Botanicoir and Legro proudly join forces, enabling Botanicoir to make the necessary investments to cater to the increasing global demand for compressed coir products and to accelerate new product development.
Botanicoir completes the construction of a brand new hospital waiting room wing at Dankotuwa Hospital.
Botanicoir launches ‘Precision Start’ to the market, a premium peat-free coir substrate designed to provide the ideal environment for plant propagation.
Celebrating 20 years of innovation, Botanicoir is proud to mark two decades of commitment to quality, sustainability, and excellence in coir substrate production for growers worldwide.
Within the first year of founding Botanicoir, we began sponsoring a local orphanage, set up following the tragic Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004. Since then, we’ve witnessed how many lives can be touched by sharing the global successes of coir, one of Sri Lanka’s biggest exports, back into the local community.
We hope that you – our growers and industry peers, feel the same pleasure and motivation as we do from seeing how many wonderful stories have been created over the past 20 years of Botanicoir’s community support.
We’ve had a very special video made at our Sri Lankan facility, to celebrate 20 years of community building, interviewing some of those involved in caring for the local community.
At Botanicoir, we pride ourselves on pushing forward and innovating the coir industry, creating products which respond to the needs and requirements of growers. This is why our long term partnerships with growers are so important to us. With their feedback and expertise, we can focus on tailoring our products to help our growers produce higher yields from healthier plants. But don’t just take it from us, hear what our growers have to say!
Working with Sandy has been pivotal to our journey. He has trialled our products with great success, and we are so pleased to see his operations go from strength to strength.
“Precision Plus Ultra growbags generate a higher fruit quality, and we have seen increased yields. They have better drainage, higher air-filled porosity, due to ‘ultra’ particles in the substrate and they are consistent, which encourages uniform rooting and healthier plants.”
We have supported Andrey to grow strawberries in a water-scarce area, defying the odds in challenging conditions, thanks to innovative farming practices, water recycling, and consistent, free-draining coir.
“The consistency of the coir growing media is important, because we can’t afford to have variable growing media – we need guaranteed quality each year or our system won’t be as effective. The strawberry rooting is always excellent and that’s why we continue using the product. We also re-use the grow bags for two years running, either with two plantings or by overwintering the strawberries.”
We’re proud to support Micky and his team at the Summer Berry Company in advancing to year-round strawberry production. We’ve worked with him for over 10 years, and the consistency of the coir we supply is key to supplying UK supermarkets.
“Botanicoir consistently delivers quality and there is not a year when this isn’t the case, it’s always the same and as a grower this is really important.”
Sander Steinmann, Head of Global Sales
Here’s to another 20 years of development within the coir industry. But what will the future hold? With the demand for a secure food supply increasing globally, we’re expecting greenhouses and alternative farming methods to become increasingly popular and a vital component in adapting to our changing climate.
Our commitment continues to lie with the success of our growers, their sustainability ambitions and producing high quality produce. We will stick by their side, developing on our industry knowledge, improving our product offering and making sure we can provide consistent, market-leading coir substrate to more growers across the world.
