Mulch Manufacturers See Bright Colorful Future

By P.J. Heller

     Mulch manufacturers who are hoping to make more “green” may want to look at making more reds, browns, blacks and lots of other colors as well.
     That’s because, according to some mulch industry experts, the demand for colored mulch is a thriving and lucrative business in most parts of the U.S., affecting everyone from mulch manufacturers to lawn and garden supply stores and big box outlets who resell their products to individual landscapers and homeowners.
     “Any company in the mulch production business is either considering, or has considered, or is going to make colored mulch,” says John Spencer, chief executive officer of Mulch Manufacturing in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, and a pioneer in the colored mulch market. “They about have to. It’s a broad enough business that if you’re not making colored products, then you’re missing a big opportunity.”
     About 25 percent of total mulch sales for Mulch Manufacturing, one of the largest mulch producers in the nation, are the colored variety, according to Spencer.
     The company also sells its Nature’s Reflections colorant and its line of Cheetah coloring systems.
     At Foster Brothers Wood Products in Auxvasse, Mo., company president and co-owner Jay Foster says sales of colored mulches have increased by at least 5 percent every year over the last five or six years. That amounts to about 3,100 tractor-trailer loads of colored mulch this year, about 35 percent of all materials sold.  “The first year we did it, we probably only sold 200 loads of colored material,” Foster says.
     “The growth of the mulch industry has been helped by colorant being added to the mulch, making the mulch more attractive to the consumer,” notes Kriem Michel, national sales manager for T.H. Glennon Co. “Homeowners trying to sell their home are using this colored mulch to improve curb appeal.”
     T.H. Glennon, a colorant and equipment manufacturer based in Salisbury, Mass., reports major increases each year in sales of its Colorfast colorant. Some two dozen colors are offered, including reds, browns and gold to black, blue and green. The company also manufacturers the Color Jet compact coloring unit, which officials say makes it easy and affordable for mulch producers to generate colored mulches.
     Michel says mulch manufacturers are turning more and more to colored mulches to improve their bottom line. “You make more money,” she says. “You make more money when you sell colored mulch than not.”
     “It is very lucrative and definitely a viable business,” agrees Andrew Tuckman, marketing manager in charge of sales, PR and outreach with Vision Recycling in Fremont, Calif.
     Vision Recycling manufactures and sells colored mulch, along with nearly a dozen other products, at the landfill in Santa Cruz County.
     “It’s become a thriving business,” Tuckman says. “It was a very smart move to start coloring the material. You can move the material faster and create the circle of sustainability. It created a market so we could move it off the landfill quickly.”
     He says the attraction of the colored mulch is its aesthetic appeal. Kent Rotert, director of marketing and sales at Colorbiotics in Ames, Iowa, the largest producer of colorant and colorant systems equipment in the nation, agrees.
     According to Rotert, more people are using colored mulch products today because more people are reinvesting in their homes and properties today than they were in past years.
     This trend is driven by the slowdown in home sales and plummeting home values, resulting in people holding on to and fixing up their properties. Despite the economic slump, consumers are still willing to spring for colored mulch to spruce up their properties.
     “It’s certainly not the price point because it’s more expensive,” Tuckman says. “It just looks good.”
     Utilizing equipment and colorant from Amerimulch, Vision Recycling offers its colored mulches to landscapers, do-it-yourselfers and to wholesale nurseries who then resell it.
     One of those landscapers, Nikos Lynch of Terra Bella Landscaping in Santa Cruz, says it’s usually an easy matter to sell clients on colored mulch rather than non-colored. “When you see the two together, nine out of 10 are going to pick the colored mulch, even though it costs one-third more,” he says.
     That cost differential may be offset somewhat by the fact that the colored mulches last longer than most natural materials, according to manufacturers.
     “Almost any colored mulch will exceed the longevity of hardwood,” Spencer says. “Colored mulch won’t fade as quickly . . . We have colorants that will last more than two years. We have done accelerated testing where we can keep a colorant out in the rain for over three years. The colorants are getting better all the time. So the product lasts longer in the environment.”
     Foster agrees, saying that the longevity of the colored mulches is one of its biggest selling points, even though it may be 30 to 40 percent more expensive.
     “A lot of people in the urban areas hire someone to spread the mulch in their yard and the labor tends to be rather expensive to spread the mulch,” he notes. “It’s probably more expensive than the mulch itself. If you get two seasons out of colored mulch versus one season out of the natural materials and if you’re hiring somebody to do it, I think in the long run you’re saving money even though the colored mulch is more expensive.”
     Rotert of Colorbiotics says that while its UV-treated colorants last longer than untreated wood, there are other considerations that need to be considered. Among them: the type of wood source, type of colorant and how it is applied. The company maintains a full lab and will do studies for customers to determine the life of a colorant on a wood source.
     Foster, who operates one of the largest wood byproducts companies in Missouri, started selling colored mulches about 12 years ago.
     “Truthfully, we didn’t want to [get into the colored mulch market] but a lot of our customers started requesting it because their customers were requesting it,” he says.
     While there is little debate about the marketability of colored mulches, there is little consensus on what color sells best. Much depends on where in the U.S. the colored mulch is going to be used. “Every geographic region is very different across the United States,” Rotert says, noting that is the reason his company has territory managers located throughout the nation.
     “The markets are different and the needs are different from a geographical standpoint,” he explains. “So what’s needed in the Northwest is different than what’s needed in the Southeast, not only in the colorant but in the support and the equipment and the knowledge of the industry and the consumer.”
     Colorbiotics offers nearly 20 different colorants, ranging from reds, browns and black to orange, blue, green and yellow. The company recently launched an iPhone app that helps customers select the best color mulch and the proper quantity for their property.
     Foster sells five different colors: red, a light and dark brown, black and gold. The black and gold mulches don’t sell well, although Foster says black is a top seller in the East. The two shades of brown are the big sellers, accounting for about 70 percent of his colored mulch sales.
     He recalls one customer’s request for blue colored mulch to match a college team’s colors; that project was eventually scrapped due to the prohibitive cost for just a limited amount of the mulch.
     “If I had my druthers, we wouldn’t produce but one color of mulch because you have to have more storage, more colorant . . .” Foster says
     Even if a store carried five shades of red colored mulch, someone would want a slight variation in the color, he says.
     “For the consumer, the more choices there are the better,” he notes. “Sometimes for the manufacturer that’s not the case.”
     The colored mulches are produced by three Colorbiotics machines (a Sahara 300, Sahara 200 and a Second Harvester) located at three of the five yards around the state operated by Foster.
     Mulch Manufacturing produces about 35 different colors, ranging from various shades of red to browns and golden. Earth tones, such as dark red, black and golden, have tended to be the biggest sellers, Spencer says. “The most popular color is red,” he notes. “There are a variety of shades, from real deep burgundy or maroon to lighter reds and more vivid reds. Black is also a very popular color in some places. But in some places you can’t sell a single bag of black. In other areas, black is the most popular. Overall, in all areas, red is the best seller.”
     Spencer says that brown colored mulch has been gaining in popularity. “Brown has never been a very popular color but it is coming on more strongly now,” he reports. “We’ve seen more growth in brown in the last year or two than anything else.”
     Vision Recycling limits its offering to mahogany (brown), barnwood (red) and black.
“They’re all comparable [in sales],” Tuckman reports.
     Michel of T.H. Glennon agrees that location will largely determine the popularity of a color.
     “In Florida, the number one color is red. The number two color is red. And the number three color is red,” she says with a laugh. “It took me years before I could get Floridians to make brown.”
     Black and brown mulches are the preferred colors everywhere except in Florida, she says.
     In the Pacific Northwest, Vicki Leiber of Swanson Bark & Wood Products says colored mulches have never caught on there. The Longview, Wash., company, in business since 1928, produces mulch, custom soil mixes and recycled wood products.
     “We actually tried in different ways to get into this market, but in the Pacific Northwest we use mainly fir bark,” says Leiber, who co-owns Swanson with her husband John. “It’s already a red color, a very pretty color. People in this area are not interested in red-colored wood. To them that’s not a good substitute for the fir bark that we use.”
     Leiber said Swanson made efforts in the past to produce and sell colored mulches, purchasing equipment and colorants from both Colorbiotics and Amerimulch.
     “We tried it retail. We tried bagging it. We took it to shows. People got all excited when they saw the big pile of bright color and they went over and looked at it and then they went, ‘Oh wait, this is just colored wood,’” Leiber says.
     Spencer, however, says there is more to colored mulch than just applying a colorant to the wood. "Depending on the colorant, it can wash off if it’s not done properly,” he says. “It can stain sidewalks if it’s not properly set or have the right binders in it. Part of our ongoing work in improving our colorant product is to improve its longevity . . .”
     Spencer also sees the possibility of expanding the use of colored mulches.
“I think possibly once you start putting colorant on wood fiber to put out in your landscaping, there is the opportunity to put other attributes into the mulch also.”
     Those attributes might include such things as retardant chemicals for insects and fertilizer and weed-killing attributes “so that it has other applications other than just aesthetics. “We’re onboard with that already,” Spencer says. “We’re doing a lot of work in that area.”
     Michel notes that T.H. Glennon already adds a mold and fungus protection for wood mulch to its colorant. “The additive protects the dried colorant film against discoloration caused by microbial attack and thereby improves color longevity and durability,” she explains. “Mulch makers can make larger colored mulch piles without loss of color.”
     Rotert says he expects the market for colored mulch to continue to grow despite higher costs to manufacturers for everything from raw material and diesel fuel to labor and plastics.
     “Where the market will be at 10 years from now, I don’t know,” Foster adds. “All mulch sales might be colored.