Our history
Germinal is part of the Openfolde family of companies, which was established in 1825 in Belfast by Mr Samuel McCausland. The current shareholders are his direct descendants.
In 1967, the Group opened for business in the UK, with a site in Oxfordshire. The business was branded British Seed Houses Ltd and was central in the development of new cereal and forage varieties in the UK.
Over time, Germinal developed a role in the retail professional amenity business and supplied wholesalers with retail lawn boxed seed. In the 1990s, with forage seed dominating the business and the new Aber varieties coming online from IBERS, they refocused and withdrew from the arable seed market, to enable them to expand further in forage and amenity seeds.
In 2015, the Germinal group rebranded under one single brand – Germinal and Germinal GB was born, now based at Lincoln they produce and contract over half of the UK’s grass seed crop and are the only seed distributor to maintain their own seed cleaning facilities.
Today they have two teams of specialists, one advising farmers on the latest forage technology and one on the amenity side working with some of the UK elite sports pitches.
Managing Director Paul Billings says, ''Germinal GB believes in knowledge building and knowledge exchange. Our vision is to share our knowledge in a real way with our customers and innovating through ground breaking products, we will lead our industry and make a real difference to the world.''
The Germinal values are:
Honest
We are honest and straight talking with our customers, suppliers and other stakeholders, making us a reliable and trustworthy partner.
Supportive
Everyone supports each other within the Germinal team, and together we support our
customers at home and across the world to achieve their goals.
Loyal
Germinals’ legacy as a 6th generation family business, means together we stay steadfast and true in our internal and external relationships.
Progressive
Germinal is consistently innovative in product development, new technologies and delivering sustainable strategies for future growth; we welcome and champion new ideas from all sources.
Driven
Our team is motivated by achieving excellence in customer service, product performance, production capability and making a real difference to the worldthrough our success.
Confident
We will maintain our leading position through our team spirit, strong company culture, in-depth technical knowledge and market leading products. Germinal has the boldness and confidence to take our industry forward.