The world of professional flower growing is one dedicated to the pursuit of beauty. But it is also a world of rapacious piracy, as was revealed by a break-in at the offices of one of Italy’s most successful flower growers last week in which a computer containing the firm’s most closely guarded secrets was stolen.
Police on the picturesque Ligurian coast — known as the Riviera of Flowers — said the theft was committed by a professional gang, and that they were dealing with a clear case of industrial espionage.
The raid has caused consternation among the hundreds of wholesalers and flower growers who sell their goods through the San Remo flower market, the biggest in southern Europe.
Closed-circuit television footage of the break-in at the premises of Angelo Musetti showed the men arriving at 11pm and checking the security system. They returned three hours later, after a routine patrol by police had passed by, and got in through a fire door. They took the computer as well as floppy disks and CD-ROMs.
Police believe that the stolen information would be invaluable to another grower or to someone who wanted to know the secrets of Italian floriculture. The data included the names and contact details of hundreds of the firm’s customers all over the world and lists of flowers and their selling prices. It has also been suggested that the thieves got away with important information about rare species of rose.
Following the burglary, security is being tightened across the agricultural district. San Remo grower Antonio Marchese, who unveiled a new hybrid rose called Rosa mystica last year, has always refused to keep valuable information on a computer. ”I trust only myself and a few of the people I work with,” he said. ”I take all the precautions I possibly can because there are a lot of pirates out there, ready to steal your work.”
In this highly competitive business, the development of a new hybrid can reap enormous financial rewards. A new variety of rose suitable for the commercial market, for example, may cost as much as â,¬1-million and take seven years to develop. It can, however, earn its creator 10 times that sum. Often, innovators find their work devalued by competitors who steal information or try to sell plants illegally under pseudonyms.
British newspaper The Observer‘s gardening columnist, Monty Don, said: ”There are stories about people making huge fortunes from new breeds — it can really transform a small business. If the thieves stole a plant from a competitor, they could take a cutting from it. But it would still take them two years to get it on the market.”
News of the theft has been the talk of the San Remo flower market where 450 wholesalers and 6 500 flower growers operate. ”It’s really a great surprise,” said Monica Nepote, spokesperson for the local flower industry. ”They have lost very important information and many years of work.”
Police believe the burglars were brought in from outside San Remo for the job at Angelo Musetti, a family-run firm that has been operating for 40 years. It cultivates dozens of varieties of rose as well as other cut flowers and ornamental foliage and sells largely in Europe.
Musetti said he did not want to talk about the theft except to say that ”economic information” had been stolen. He confirmed that police were treating it as industrial espionage.
There have been other such cases on the Ligurian coast. Thieves broke into the Experimental Institute of Floriculture in San Remo and stole disks that contained information on a new variety of buttercup and a fertiliser that was being developed to protect certain types of plants from parasites. — Guardian Unlimited Â