Floral industry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Floral industry is one of the major industries in many developing and underdeveloped countries. Floriculture as an industry began in the late 1800s in England, where flowers were grown on a large scale on the vast estates. The present day floral industry is a dynamic, global, fast-growing industry, which has achieved significant growth rates during the past few decades. In the 1950s, the global flower trade was less than US$3 billion. By 1992, it had grown to US$100 billion. In recent years, the floral industry has grown six percent annually, while the global trade volume in 2003 was US$101.84 billion.
The floral industry essentially consists of three major components: the growers, the wholesalers and the retailers whose businesses are quite intermingled. The recent trends are more towards eliminating the intermediaries, the wholesalers between the growers and the retailers, so that the flowers are made available at considerably low prices.
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[edit] Transportation Of Flowers
Some flowers are sent packed flat in boxes. This enables large amounts of flowers to be packed in small spaces like aircraft holds. Other flowers cannot survive for long periods out of water. These are either sent with their own little water holders on each stem end - for more expensive or tropical flowers - or are transported in buckets of water. The latter method extends the life of flowers and reduces labour time as flowers are ready for sale, but obviously also reduces the amount of flowers that can be transported as they are much heavier than dry-packed flowers and hence air transportation charges are higher.
Flowers take a number of routes to the consumer, depending on where they are grown and how they are to be sold. Some growers cut and pack flowers at their nurseries, sending them directly out to the consumer by mail order. Some flowers are sent to packing companies, who grade the flowers and arrange them in bunches for sale onto the supermarkets or to deliver by mail order. Some flowers are graded and sleeved by the growers and sold to wholesale markets; the wholesalers then sell them on to florists who condition and arrange the flowers for the consumer.
[edit] Dutch Flower Industry
Traditionally the center of flower production has been the developed world, with Japan, Western Europe and North America as the major contributors. It has been well documented in the past how the flower industry has been one of the leading industries in the Dutch economy. The Dutch flower auctions have played a major role in the growth of the Dutch flower industry.
Since the mid-1970s, the production and distribution of cut flowers in Netherlands has burgeoned. In 1995, Dutch growers produced over 8 billion blooms and the flower auctions collectively traded more than 5.4 billion guilders (about $3.2 billion) in cut flowers and potted plants, contributing over 4 billion guilders annually to the Dutch balance of trade. The Dutch flower auctions are key institutions in the world flower industry and a base for the flower trade in the Netherlands.
[edit] New Flower Growing Centres
Experts believe that the production focus has moved from traditional growers, such as the Netherlands, Germany and France, to countries where the climates are better and production costs are lower. This has resulted in a paradigm shift in the floral industry. Netherlands, for instance, has already shifted attention from flower production to flower trading. Also, the floral industry is essentially a labour-intensive one, which is why the biggest market though still is the Dutch one at Aalsmeer, the flowers are from Third World producers like Ecuador, Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia and India. Other players in this global industry are Israel, South Africa and Malaysia.
Geographically speaking,in Africa, Kenya and Zimbabwe are major exporters. Both are good rose producers. In South America, Colombia is a leading flower producer and exporter. In fact it accounted for about 60% of all flowers imported by America in 2004.
The floral industry's current focus is to find new markets. The major international consumer markets being Germany (22 percent), the US (15 percent), France (10 percent), the UK (10 percent), the Netherlands (9 percent), Japan (6 percent), Italy (5 percent), and Switzerland (5 percent).
