Competition is transforming the buying and selling of flowers
May 10th 2007 | NAALDWIJK
A BUNCH of flowers can appear beguilingly simple, but it is a miracle of distribution. Its delicate blooms may have grown on farms scattered around the world, yet they arrived at your local florist within days of harvest. Along the way, crowded with millions of others, your stems may have been part of the endless parade under the fluorescent lights of the Dutch flower auctions.
AFP Now that’s a bunch of flowers
Run by co-operatives of local growers, the auctions embody logistical virtuosity. Each lot of flowers—30% of them grown abroad—is unpacked, placed in buckets of water, wheeled under an electronic clock before a gallery of bidders, and then packed up again and shipped to its new owners, all before 9am each day. Over 17m stems are sold each day beneath the 39 descending-bid clocks at FloraHolland and Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer, the two biggest flower auctions. Jacques Teelen, boss of FloraHolland, boasts that within 36 hours a flower can reach any florist in Europe.
