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“Just as fragrance, wine, and chocolate have become part of everyday life, flowers can reach that status too, but we, as an industry, have not communicated regularly with a consistent message over an extended period of time.”
Christine Boldt - The Association of Floral Importers of Florida (AFIF)

At a time when purchases are only a click away and global delivery services have a foothold in every corner of the planet, flowers are no longer that perishable commodity they have long thought to be. Ticker lifts off the leaf to explore the undergrowth of an exciting industry.

Q: Can you give a brief overview of the Association of Floral Importers of Florida?

A: The Association of Floral Importers of Florida has represented the interests of South Florida fresh cut flower importers since its inception in 1982. Flowers imported through Miami supply approximately two-thirds of the flowers consumed in the U.S. The Association of Floral Importers of Florida members account for the majority of the sales volume of the Miami flower importers.

The basic flower industry supply chain starts with growers, importers, wholesalers, retailers to consumer. There are more than a hundred fresh cut flower companies in Miami who are importers.

Q: What is the primary function of an importer?

A: The importers buy flowers from the farms and their responsibilities for the purchased flowers start from the farm gate. They are responsible for the transportation to Miami and most of imported flowers come by air into the Miami International Airport. The airlines then do the agricultural inspection and once the inspection is complete and the stuff is cleared the importers pick it up in their refrigerated trucks, and take it back to their refrigerated facilities. They do pre-cooling to make sure that the flowers are maintained at the best temperature. Then, they sell their product via telemarketing to wholesalers throughout the country.

The importers are responsible for delivering to all of the truck lines that the wholesalers choose to transport their flowers throughout the country. So, the importers play a significant role in the supply chain.

Q: Would you describe the process of delivery of the boxes of flowers from the farms to the importer’s facility?

A: When farms deliver the boxes of flowers to the airlines and/or cargo agencies, it depends on which country they are coming from as to where they deliver it.

For instance, in Colombia when the farms transport their boxes to the airport they transport their boxes in refrigerated trucks to the airport in Bogotá and those boxes then are put through scanners and then stacked on airline pallets(skids) so they can be loaded into planes.

When the planes arrive in Miami, those airline skids are taken out of the plane and into the facility at the Miami International Airport. Those airline skids are then broken down and all those boxes are put through a scanner again and then stacked on wooden pallets.

The way they arrive into the country from the plane is different than how an importer picks them up at the airlines.

Q: Do importers open the flower boxes?

A: It depends on who the customer is. If the flowers are already pre-sold, meaning that box is already “marked for customer”, or available for open market then it gets pre-cooled in the importer’s facility on arrival and then loaded on the importer’s truck to be delivered to the truck line.

If that box is going to a bouquet manufacturer, it will be opened up and put in wet pack boxes, which is what supermarkets and mass markets will accept. They don’t accept dry pack boxes.

Thus, if the box is going to a bouquet manufacturer then the answer is yes. If those boxes are being put in the inventory in an importer’s facility or going to a traditional wholesaler or retailer through the chain then the answer is no.

Q: Why don’t supermarkets accept the dry-pack?

A: The supermarkets want the ease of receiving and displaying the products on the shelves without much handling. They want flowers in wet-packs ready to be on the retail floor and don’t want to be responsible for sorting or handling flowers.

Q: What percentage of pre-sold flowers imported from Colombia and Ecuador fall into the “marked for customer” category?

A: It varies. We can either have a wholesaler buying direct from a grower and those boxes just have to go through a handler in Miami or have a wholesaler having a standing order with an importer that those boxes would be “pre-marked” because that customer buys that box every week.

Q: What procedure does the importer follow once the flowers arrive in Miami?

A: The importer picks up wooden pallets that have been repacked by the airline from the air skids.

When the flowers arrive in Miami from Bogota, Colombia they have to be disassembled from those airline skids and put on movable wooden pallets within the warehouse. They have to be separated for each customer. From those customers’ flowers the airlines then have to pull out the boxes that have to be opened for the agricultural inspection.

Once the customs inspector has completed the inspection for pests the airline is responsible for closing those boxes and having them on the pallets for the importer. Once the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has released the shipments, the importer can then pick up the boxes from the airline.

The importer keeps the flowers in the cold chain entire time they have possession of the boxes. The importer picks up the boxes on wooden pallets and puts them in their refrigerated trucks and takes them to their refrigerated warehousing facilities. When they arrive in their warehouse facilities they offload those boxes from the trucks and put in a pre-cooler which makes sure the temperatures are as low as they should be.

Most of the times the temperatures are between 32 degrees and 38 degrees Fahrenheit then the boxes are put on racks for sale. When the sales people find a buyer, people in the warehouse pull those boxes from the racks and put them on pallets again that are then put on trucks and delivered to truck lines that the wholesalers choose.

Q: Is there any time period in which flowers are kept at the importer’s facility?

A: It could be as little as one hour or it could be a couple of days. If that box is pre-sold or a pre-order or on standing order those boxes come in right before they are supposed to be delivered to the truck lines, so it could be that same day or next day they are put on a truck. If those boxes are imported not pre-sold or pre-ordered or with a standing order then they are put in open inventory.

Every flower has a different lifespan so depending upon the life of that flower the importer decides when to sell that flower to a wholesaler. So it could be in the warehouse for one, two or three days. It is very much market driven.

But every importer chooses the life of those flowers. So if it comes in and in three days it is not sold then it can either go to a distressed market or it could be destroyed. There is definitely a set time that those flowers would stay in a cooler.

Q: Is the organization working on “just-in-time” chain to benefit the whole flower industry?

A: We are operating just-in-time to meet the customers’ needs. But the problem is we are dealing with a perishable product and people who don’t pre-order. Moreover, the majority of flowers are not grown here.

Q: What steps are you taking to popularize flowers in everyday life?

A: Partly it is cultural and partly it is educational. Flowers are sold in so many places and under such varied conditions that the customer experience can differ dramatically. As an industry we are also fragmented from growers, importers, wholesalers to florists and we do not always speak with one voice. Just as fragrance, wine and chocolate industry has become part of everyday life flowers can reach that status too, but we, as an industry, have not communicated regularly with a consistent message over an extended period of time.

The downside of our industry is we don’t have a lot of marketing dollars and a cohesive way of promotions and marketing. We can’t change the culture of people, but if people understand the values, they can perceive it better. The flower industry has great potential to be an everyday factor if we educate people the benefits of flowers.

When people visit a family for a dinner invitation they prefer to bring a bottle of wine or dessert. Flowers are not always considered. Bringing flowers to a host family is a tradition in Europe but most people believe that flowers do not last long enough and are expensive. Well, a bottle of wine or a dessert is not going to last more than few hours but flowers will last seven days and you will be remembered that much longer.

Q: Are there any plans by the wholesalers and growers to advertise the real time inventory on the Internet?

A: There are some importers that have Internet sites for retailers where they can order flowers but the order goes through their local wholesaler because the retailers don’t have trucks that deliver to them.

Some of those platforms exist internally in the industry which is run by individual companies or groupings of companies.

Q: What is the difference in delivering flowers through the overnight couriers or receiving them from a wholesalers’ truck?

A: The cost of delivering a box of flowers by a refrigerated truck that only hauls flowers to wholesalers may be one-tenth of the cost of delivering flowers through FedEx. Overnight shipment costs more than the cost of flowers in the box. Not only that these flowers are not maintained in the cold chain but also managed in ways that may shorten the life of flowers.

The only time that flowers delivered by wholesalers are not in the refrigerated environment is the time it is being loaded onto the plane in the country of origin and the time it takes to offload at the airport in Miami. Other than that, the entire supply chain is refrigerated at every step of the way.

Our industry was set up to be totally cold chain managed the entire way. If you compare that to an Internet sale, yes, you are going to get it faster. But my opinion is anything that was cold chain managed is going to last longer than something that has been in excessive temperatures in the non-refrigerated delivery truck for hours on the local delivery route.

We have set up a structure that is the best for the flowers because flowers maintained in cooler environment have been proved to last longer.

Q: What is your view on retailers that sell flowers through the Internet?

A: There are two sides to that. The first one is the websites are offering a service and in which they have succeeded very well targeting the buyers who rely mostly on computers to fulfill their requirements.

There is a “wow” factor from something being delivered versus somebody having to open up a box and cut them, put them in water, and arrange them themselves.

Q: What percentage of imported flowers ends up in the flower arrangement?

A: We believe that about 40% of the imported stems go through the traditional retail side of our business and 60% to the mass markets or supermarket.

Q: Does the decline in number of independent florists impact your industry?

A: The declining number of independent florists is a significant issue for the industry because we depend on the retail florist shop that buy from the wholesalers then buy from the importers. So as the number of retail florist shops decline that’s less business for the wholesalers and which is less business for the importers.

Currently, there are probably around 16,000 florist shops from 22,000 about four to five years.

The number one problem was that most retailers haven’t made themselves relevant to the community. The retail florist has to be proactive and reach out to the market and let everyone know they exist in the marketplace as the scenario has changed dramatically over the last forty years. Retail shops have a different place in the market then the supermarkets or mass market stores.

Q: Who are the clients of the importers?

A: Our business started with just wholesalers. But there are bigger retail florist shops and event planners that are able to buy the volumes from the importers. More and more importers are willing to entertain smaller and smaller order sizes as the oversupply exists in the industry. The situation is only exacerbated with the current economic climate.

Another problem is neither the retail florist shop nor an event planner may necessarily have the facilities to receive large trucks so they have to go alternate ways of transportation which generally means overnight courier services or passenger airlines. And, then we are faced with the cold chain management issue. Increasingly we are witnessing that more and more wholesalers are buying direct at the farm gate.

Q: Why is there no auction marketplace like the Dutch auction system in the U.S. flower industry?

A: The flower auction in Holland got started because of the growers in that region. At the beginning when the auction starter, flowers were not flown there. Growers got together and decided to sell through one platform to get the best price. Obviously it grew more by having flowers come from other countries like Africa and Asia and now South America.

Everything that is sold at the auction is trucked in containers to customers within hours. Those containers are put on a truck and shipped to retailers for the same day delivery. Flowers are ready to ship and deliver and don’t have to be packed in a box and then shipped. All the packing and handling is done by the auction house for a fee to growers.

The United States is not like Holland where flowers can be put on a truck and delivered that same day to the customer. We can’t have our flower shipped wet packed. It is not economical for us to ship in stand-up wet boxes like they do from the auction place in Holland. They have to be dry packed in order to maximize the cube on a truck.

The flower growing industry in the United States mainly in California is still dominant among domestic flower growers. The industry shifted when growers saw that South America could be a growing region because they have the same temperature all year round with heap land and less expensive labor.

Everything in our industry is labor intensive. It takes approximately 14 to 16 people per hectare to grow flowers. There is no technology or machine that can replace the care flower needs as they grow. The constant care is provided by the growers to make sure that they are of the right quality and in right health. So labor is a significant portion of what it takes to grow commercial flowers.

All this takes extra handling that is labor intensive and buyers here are not prepared to pay for this labor.

So the smaller auction systems have been thought of or used in the past but it cannot be compared to what happened in Amsterdam and part of it is because of the transportation issues.

Q: Do you envisage that one day flower cargos will be pre-cleared at the airports in Colombia and Ecuador as we have in the Bahamas, Chile and Peru?

A: We would love for the U.S. customs to be able to do the inspections in the country of origin. The number one problem is that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the governmental agency that does the agricultural inspections at the point of entry and they are following the rules and regulations that the USDA has presented to them. Because CBP’s mission is to protect the US border, they feel that they cannot protect the border here without inspecting the product here.

The second one is the lack of airport infrastructure to handle cargo at Bogota. The airport is currently renovated for cargo handling because airport was designed for a different era.

The airport was too small for the amount of cargo they handle and most of the cargo is flower boxes. The cargo terminal will be completed by November 1, 2009 and that will expand and modernize the airport handling and storage facility.

The signing of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement would be the first indication that the U.S. government is feeling comfortable with Colombia. Once that is done and the airport facilities are complete and we get some of the pest issues solved with the farms in Colombia and Ecuador then we are in a position to discuss the pre-clearance cargo as it is done in Chile.

Q: Could you describe the infrastructure available at the Miami International Airport for the inspection of flowers?

A: We have an infrastructure in Miami that has grown because of the thirty five years of industry history. We have something that exists here that does not exist anywhere else in the United States. We have twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week inspectors available for flowers. That does not exist at any other airport.

Miami has one of the leading USDA entomologist groups in the United States available for determinations of pests and what to with flowers. So our products don’t have to wait usually more than a couple of hours for determination whether flowers need to be fumigated or not or need to be discarded. Other airports rely on the government labs in surrounding cities or the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

All of the facilities in Miami that handle flowers are all refrigerated and for all the airlines that handle flowers that’s their major commodity, so they are experienced and prepared to handle flowers 24×7. We negotiated with the airlines to handle the paperwork and the agriculture inspections for the flower industry due to the large volumes that come on the planes and that doesn’t happen in other airport.. It only happens here because of the scale of the industry.

In addition we have about 35 refrigerated truck lines that haul out of Miami region seven days a week.

We have the infrastructure to handle not only 86% of imported flowers but also 71% of the imported fruits and vegetables and 65% of air freighted fish. Overall MIA handles 71% of all perishable products that are imported via air freight.

That’s why Miami has become the number one airport to handle perishable products because we have an infrastructure here that people have tried to duplicate but hasn’t happened because of lack of scale.

Q: Why is volatility in the flower imports so high for the same week every year?

A: Our industry goes by the week and it depends on what month or week you are looking at. If Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day was one week and now it is another week, it can cause lot of shift in the import. And it also can depend on what day of the week the Valentine’s Day falls.

Or it may be that somebody was doing a promotion that week and they were pushing a certain product. It can also be the difference between the movements of products from one way of selling to another.

Source: 123jump.com

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Tags: e-floralink, Fresh Cut Flowers. Flower Industry, Floral Industry, Floral Logistics, Flower Logistics, Flower Growers, Flower Exports, Flower Imports, Flower Market, Flower Wholesale, Floricultores, Traceability, Trazabilidad

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