Skip Nav | Home | Mobile | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Security | Support Us

World

Corporate Watch: Companies trading from Ro'i settlement

Corporate Watch | 03.08.2010 20:05 | Anti-militarism | Palestine | South Coast | World

As part of Corporate Watch's efforts to map the settlement export activities from the Jordan Valley, occupied Palestine, we visited the illegal Israeli settlement Ro'i earlier this year.

For pictures, visit our web-site.

Established in 1976, Ro'i is a “typical” Jordan Valley settlement in that it has a low population (of less than 150 settlers), but have stolen large areas of land from the indigenous Palestinian population. With its private security, army protection and rows upon rows of greenhouses, Ro'i poses a great threat to Bedouin communities such as Al Hadidya, who are under constant threat of house demolitions and of being ethnically cleansed from the area, yet the Israeli's have described them as a “security threat” to the settlers. Al Hadidya is located just next to Ro'i, which was partially built on their land, and inhabitants have to more or less drive through the the outskirts of the settlement in order to reach their home. Any company trading from Ro'i, or importing their produce, are directly responsible for the very real possibility of Al Hadidya's extinction.

As is the case in all settlement businesses, most of the workforce in Ro'i is Palestinian. According to our research and interviews with workers, Palestinians working in Ro'i suffer the same bad conditions as other settlement workers in the Valley, getting neither contracts, payslips, health insurance or holiday pay. The rate of pay seems to vary more than is common in other settlements, with workers as young as 15 years old earning a mere 56NIS a day and one worker -who had worked there for 15 years- getting 120NIS a day. The average pay, they said, is around 75NIS a day -around half of the minimum wage which all workers are entitled to.

Companies found trading from Ro'i:

Bickel Group Ltd  http://www.bickel.co.il/  bickel-office@bickel.co.il
Ro'i is a big exporter of flowers and work with the Israeli company Bickel. The Bickel Group have been trading in flowers since its inception in 1944 and have lately started to export herbs, fruit and vegetables, some of which are organic. The Bickel Group comprises of Bickel Flowers Ltd, Bickel Group Export and Trade (which was the company working in Ro'i) and Bickel Flowers UK. Bickel Flowers UK was established in 1998 and is the marketing arm for exports to the UK and Ireland. They are listed as a registered active importer if flowers by DEFRA. The company also appear to work closely with Holland -a country known for its flower exports. There have previously been suspicions that Israeli flowers sometimes get shipped to Holland and then repackaged, as flowers are not required to give a country of origin.

We have been unable to obtain an address for Bickel Flowers UK, but the address for a Bickel contact is Holland is: Bickel Group Holland, P.O. Box 6030, 2001 HA, Haarem.
Phone 0031237505120

Carmel Agrexco  http://www.agrexco.co.il/en/home.asp :
As you would expect, Carmel Agrexco has a large presence in Ro'i, where they are yet again working with individual settlers (for a previous report on Agrexco in the Valley see  http://corporateoccupation.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/corporations-in-tomer-settlement/ ). As in Mehola, much of their exports appear to consist of various herbs. However, there were also several Carmel Agrexco branded packing houses for the export of flowers. The Agrexco growers spotted inside Ro'i are: Capoano Isaac and Marmur Shlomi (both fresh herbs), Sivan Moshe, Mezan Zohar and Aglamaz Avi (all packing flowers and grapes for export).

Arava www.arv.co.il
Arava is one of the exporters from Ro'i. For a previous report about Arava's business see  http://corporateoccupation.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/corporations-in-tomer-settlement-part-2/ . We found one Arava packing house dedicated to exporting “Fresh herbs from the desert”. It is run by the grower Elchayany David.

FloraHolland  http://www.floraholland.com/en/Pages/default.aspx
The Dutch FloraHolland -whose signs were seen on several flower growing greenhouses in Ro'i- is a cooperative growers' collective and one of the world's largest flower auctioning houses. Their daily auctions take place in various locations in the Netherlands, and then the produce get transported straight to the buyer. Israel is one of the six biggest flower providers for FloraHolland, and the UK is one of the five main countries they export to, so Israel's settlement produce is very likely to make it's way to the UK via Holland without us even being able to trace it.
For contact details for the various FloraHolland sites, see  http://www.floraholland.com/en/general/pages/contact.aspx

MAG
There were several signs for an Israeli company called MAG inside Ro'i. They seem to be in the business of fish breeding -which they are carrying out on the settlement- but their logo could also be found alongside Agrexco's on at least one packing house. Corporate Watch have as yet been able to find any further information about this company.

Yamko Yadpaz Industries Ltd  http://www.yamko.co.il
Yamko Yadpaz is an Israeli company specialising in greenhouses and greenhouse technology. They do not trade from Ro'i but their products are used by many supply many of the settlers for their illegal agriculture projects. They describe themselves as “The leading Israeli supplier of greenhouses with more than 20 years of experience in export of greenhouses world wide”.

Although they don't list all their distributors, they do have a link to their agents, who deal with exports to Kenya, USA, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus:
 http://www.yamko.co.il/index.php?page_id=369

Corporate Watch
- Homepage: http://corporateoccupation.wordpress.com

Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

/regional publish include --> /regional search include -->

World Topics

Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Server Appeal Radio Page Video Page Indymedia Cinema Offline Newsheet

secure Encrypted Page

You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.

If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech