Be it the Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day or any special occasion, flowers are undoubtedly one of the most traded produce globally. Quintessential to any celebration, flowers are of great importance and are integral to the human society. The cut flower industry, therefore, has been flourishing rapidly and widely, mainly on the back of air freight industry that has been instrumental in providing quick and efficient transportation to over 95 percent of the exported cut flowers. As an efficient support system, the air cargo industry ensures they have more than enough capacity to handle the constant flow of the delicate cargo as eighty to ninety percent of purchases are shipped within 24 hours.
Packing fresh flowers for transport
With the snip of a stem – the clock starts ticking for growers who hydrate and place flowers quickly in coolers on site. Using special techniques, the flowers are then packed for transportation. The most common packaging is boxes in which the flowers are placed horizontally. Carefully loaded onto pallets, refrigerated trucks bring them to airports where they are loaded onto cargo planes.
Crucial role played by air cargo industry
The journey of flowers from the growers to the consumer isn’t an easy one, for it requires specific temperatures to survive the drive. The extremely delicate nature of the grown product combined with the potential challenges of air transport means managing flower logistics demands specific expertise.
Significant air cargo players are developing special facilities designed for the transport of flowers.
One of the fundamental aspects for the transport of flowers, and of any type of perishable items, is the cold chain. The temperature control throughout the logistics chain is vital to maintain and ensure the product quality. Accordingly, airlines guarantees temperature controlled warehouses throughout the Cargo network; use of thermographs that allow the analysis of temperature information in different transport stages; temperature programming in warehouses of cargo aircraft and wide passenger airframe; and, in addition, reduced times of reception and delivery of the cargo.
Airports promote customer’s refrigerated facilities, expert handling, and fumigation centres. They ensure they have enough customs and inspectors during peak season to handle the extra work load and provide the necessary truck parking and traffic flow to move the flowers off airport as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Africa’s flower market gathering speed
Jane Ngige, former Chief Executive Officer, KFC, states, “Freight cost from Kenya remains one of the highest compared to other horticulture producing/exporting countries in the world. It affects the competitiveness of the Kenyan flowers in terms of cost and hinders direct exports to some destination as well as stifling those willing to venture in new destinations.”
African countries producing flowers are also grappling with the challenge of poor infrastructure. Making of a sustainable cool chain remains to be a prime challenge in Africa. Some of the farms, are actually one to three hours from the Airport, trucks take longer to arrive, because of some challenges which come across the way, one of them being the infrastructure.
Sometimes the trucks are delayed because of the roads, especially when there is bad weather, or because of the security checks, on the way from farm to the airport. So the biggest challenge is how to make the cool chain.
While infrastructure at JKIA is catching up with the increase in production of recent years, cool chain facilitators are also doing their bit to smoothen the journey of flowers.
Jeroen van der Hulst of FlowerWatch explains, “The African flower industry grew big supplying the auctions. This is usually done through importers, who unpack, re-cut and re-hydrate flowers. Any issues with diseases, damages and opening stage can be corrected at that stage, but at considerable cost.”
“At FlowerWatch we are setting an industry standard for cold chain performance together with our customers. In our best performing cold chains our customers are grabbing new opportunities for shipping to new markets further away with higher load rates, less handling costs and a better quality. It is our firm opinion that innovation in the business can only work when our new cold chain standards are met,” adds Hulst.
With more and more efforts being put by all major stakeholders, the growers, the cool chain facilitators, air cargo players and the retailers-whose businesses are quite intermingled, the trends and opportunities in the fastevolving floral industry looks dynamic, with the industry achieving significant growth rates year on year.