From a nursery in Holland to an apartment in Paris within 24 hours… How do they do it?

FloraHolland is the largest flower market on earth. With 4 000 employees, 3 000 customers and exporters, 120 000 transactions per day and 12 billion units of flowers and plants traded per year, they own a staggering 60% of the worldwide flower and plant export market!

We all love receiving flowers… whether it’s for a birthday, anniversary, wedding, graduation, or that special person expressing their love. So without a doubt, flowers play an important role in our world.

We found this 10 min video which was commissioned by FloraHolland very interesting (if you are reading this article in an email, you may need to read it on our website to see the video). We think you will be as amazed as we are, so we decided to share it with you. Grab a coffee, make yourself comfortable and click the play button…

Solving the Complicated Logistics Puzzle

In case you can’t watch the video, here is a short summary…

FloraHolland offers growers and customers a network of six national and international marketplaces (Aalsmeer, Naaldwijk, Rijnsburg, Venlo, Bleiswijk and Eelde), a national intermediary organization called FloraHolland Connect and an internationally active import department.

To keep up with the fast changing trends, FloraHolland helps the grower develop new ideas and offers advice on the practical implementation of these ideas.

FloraHolland’s auction is like a complicated logistics puzzle, which has to be solved as fast as possible day in day out. They assemble millions of flowers from Holland as well as from the rest of the world, so that they can appear on the auction clocks each day.

The flower auction is where supply and demand comes together and traders whose customers are located all over the world buy their flowers here. Within an hour of the trader placing his bid, they are ready to be shipped internationally, and not long after, the flowers are already a part of a French bouquet.

There are two ways for a grower of flowers and plants to sell his products, either via the auction clock using a daily price, or by mediation where FloraHolland mediates between the grower and the buyer and sets concrete price agreements.

FloraHolland also source some of their roses from Kenya, which make their way to the customer via the six FloraHolland markets mentioned above. They even offer a trucking and tracing service of the temperature during transport from the nursery to the auction.

Upon arrival, all flowers and plants are checked for quality, freshness and maturity before the auction.

The flowers and plants can also be bought remotely through a process called remote buying. Buyers can bid on flowers just as if they were at the auction itself. They often buy large amounts of flowers for customers such as supermarkets in this way.

Interesting Stats Extracted from the Video

• 8 000 Growers

• 5 000 Members

• 4 000 Employees

• 3 000 Customers / Exporters

• 4 Billion Euros in Sales

• 13 Auction Rooms

• 42 Auction Clocks

• 270 000 Auction Trolleys

• 200 000 000 Packaging Units (buckets, trays, boxes)

• 120 000 Transactions per day

• 60 Import Countries

• 140 Export Countries

• 20 000 Different types of Flowers and Plants

• 12 Billion Units of Flowers and Plants traded per Year

• 60% of the Worldwide Export of Flowers and Plants

We think this video was a great initiative and we applaud FloraHolland for giving us a peek behind the scenes of what must be the most powerful gear in the floral industry.

PS: Let us know what you thought of the video in the comments, and if you enjoyed this article, help spread the word by clicking the “Like” button or sharing it using the share icons below. Want to read more articles like this? Then Subscribe to our Updates, and get our articles directly to your inbox or RSS reader.

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