In most industries, time is money. In the flower industry, however, it’s a lot more: there, time is everything. From the Netherlands, millions of flowers are despatched every day to destinations all over the world. Flower exporter Hilverda De Boer makes sure they get there.
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t’s six-thirty on the morning of a cold grey November day. In a small room inside a big building, just two kilometres south of Amsterdam, there’s a hive of activity. Hundreds of people are seated in close formation in front of a long row of wagons loaded with flowers in every imaginable colour as they roll slowly past on the floor below.
On the wall in front, the information is displayed in quick succession: “Gerbera Mini Explosive”, 50 centimetre stalk, highest quality, minimum quantity: two boxes...
A gigantic “clock” on the wall indicates the flower’s current price today: a red lamp drops anti-clockwise through a sinking price scale and stops only when one of the buyers presses a button: 40 cents...30 cents...20 cents... and suddenly: 18 cents per flower. The deal is done.
Just a second later all the information in the display has been replaced, it’s time now for the day’s first crop of bright yellow “Gerbera Prairie” to go under the hammer.
Welcome to Aalsmer’s Flower Auctions, the world’s largest single flower market.
This is the place for everyone who wants to see how “logistics” can be transformed into pure art. More than 20 million flowers and plants change hands here during a few hectic hours between dawn and lunch, every single day. In one long, uninterrupted transport chain, 6000 Dutch growers reach out to flower-lovers the world over via more than a thousand exporters and wholesalers who expertly pack, sort and load flowers for further transport in every direction of the compass.
“The roses you see here arrived during the night. Our goal is that they should be able to be sold on the street in any city in the world within 24 hours,” says Adriënne Lansbergen, press officer at the flower auction, and continues: “The average flower has a “lifetime” of about a week. This means that it loses about 15 percent of its value in one single day. Therefore only three things matter in our business: to be quick, to be quick and to be quick...”.
It’s just after 12 noon and Piet Visser climbs into the cab of his chalk-white, brand-new Volvo FH12. A cowboy’s Stetson graces his head.
“I drive better that way,” he says and laughs. Today he’s in a hurry, like on most other days. He has just loaded a trailer full of flowers. In just another hour or so the rig will be rolling on board the high-speed ferry to England, where four flower-shops are awaiting new deliveries. “The customers don’t like to wait. I have to deliver my load before four o’clock tomorrow morning, so it’s a matter of picking up the pace and keeping things moving.”
Facts, Aalsmer’s flower auction
■ A cooperative owned by just over 3000 growers in the Netherlands. 1800 employees from 135 countries.
■ One of a total of seven flower auctions in the Netherlands. The largest single flower market in the world, with a daily turnover of 19 million cut flowers and two million plants.
■ Has an operational hall totalling 1 million square metres, corresponding to 165 football fields.
■ The most important product is roses, followed by tulips and chrysanthemums. Annual turnover of more than two billion roses.
■ Has five auction chambers with a total of 13 buyers’ clocks, three of which are used only for roses.
■ The clocks work according to the “Dutch pricing” system, whereby the price begins high and gradually falls to the level at which the first buyer bids. This system counteracts price rigging and favours open competition.
Piet Visser drives trucks for Hilverda De Boer, one of the leading Dutch flower exporters. The company’s head office is located just a stone’s throw from Aalsmer’s flower auction and is linked to it via an automated conveyor belt hovering about ten metres above the ground which carries fresh flowers from the trading floor at the auction-house directly into the company’s warehouse.
On the floor of this 90,000 square metre facility the pace is as fast as it is inside the auction-house across the street. Flowers enter at one end in the morning, are taken in, repacked and despatched to the loading pier with its eight bays at the far end of the building.
The entire warehouse is air-conditioned to maintain the correct temperature for the vulnerable flowers at all times. The same applies to the company’s eight trucks.
“On average we maintain between five and six degrees in the trailer, depending on outside temperature and the type of flowers we’re carrying. Roses, for example, should preferably be transported cold. Orchids, on the other hand, don’t like the cold,” explains Piet Visser.
Hilverda De Boer exports flowers to the whole world. However, it’s only the customers in Europe who get their colourful loads delivered by truck. Flowers for customers in Asia, the USA and the Middle East are dispatched by air.
The companies have about twenty buyers located throughout the flower market, each specialising in a handful of flower varieties whose characteristics and commercial viability they know inside-out. What is more, the company also buys flowers directly from growers in the Netherlands and abroad.
For Johan Hilarides, President of Hilverda De Boers, every new day in the flower business is a new, demanding and exciting challenge.
“I know of no other market that is so open and transparent as ours is. All the competitors sit beside each other near the clock and know exactly what the others are buying, how much and at what price. We trade in identical goods and can only compete on the basis of our peripheral services, such as various logistics solutions or service packages.
“So all told, we have to be alert. If you don’t like competition, you’re in the wrong business!” he continues with a laugh.
Nonetheless, the future of the Dutch flower industry looks fairly promising. Traditional large export markets such as Germany and France may admittedly be satiated for the moment, but further to the east new, growing markets have opened up in recent years owing to the expansion of the EU and the increased trade and growth that this brings.
Facts, Hilverda De Boer
■ Part of the Hilverda Group and one of Holland’s leading exporters of cut flowers.
■ Has 250 employees and exports to 50 countries the world over.
■ Head office in Aalsmer, Holland, with sales offices in the USA and Japan.
■ Has eight trucks for the company’s own transport requirements. Seven Volvo FH12, of which three were purchased in spring 2005.
■ Each of the trucks covers about 200,000 kilometres a year, mainly travelling to Sweden, Britain, Germany and France. For the other markets, the company uses external haulage firms.
.“Flowers are a luxury product tied rather closely to income-related demand. Sales increase in good economic times, although things can change very quickly if taxes are raised or the economy suffers a downturn,” says Johan Hilarides.
In the courtyard below his office window Piet Visser rumbles away with his fully loaded truck, heading north for the coast. Today he is driving alone, as always on the shorter routes. For longer runs, for instance up to Scandinavia, the company always uses two drivers.
“All so as to keep the truck rolling as much as possible. It is immensely important that the deliveries get there quickly,” explains Johan Hilarides.
And it’s easy to take him at his word. Just after three in the afternoon, most of the deliveries have been sent on their way. Out in the warehouse, the buzz of activity is beginning to slow down. A hectic working day begins to draw to a close.
A short distance away, Adriënne Lansbergen walks quickly through the flower auction’s enormous working hall. The occasional fork-lift truck slides by with the last of the many flowers that have to be shipped off, out into the wide world beyond.
On the floor are the last remnants of the day’s business: crushed flowers and torn leaves are mixed with plastic strips and bits of colourful cartons.
“Now you can see what we really work with here: it’s not about flowers, but about logistics,” she says and continues:
“We break up the “bulk”. The trucks that come in here in the morning are filled with flowers of one and the same sort. That trucks that leave here later carry a wide range to several florists. In the period between the two we set prices for the flowers and ready them for export.”
Sounds simple. But still: flowers are an extremely demanding commodity. Sensitive and short-lived, they are sold at low prices and in large volumes, in the face of razor-sharp competition and on markets that are anything but predictable. Making a profit from them is no easy task.
“However, our goal as a cooperative is not to turn a profit but rather to set optimum prices for our members’ products,” says Adriënne Lansbergen. ■