an Eldis Resource
The world cut flower industry: Trends and prospects
Authors:
G. van Liemt
Publisher:
Sectoral Activities Programme, ILO, 1999
The world cut flower industry is a highly dynamic industry. Product varieties, the origin of production, production techniques, markets and retailing arrangements are all undergoing continuous change, challenging the adaptive capacity of the actors involved. In a slowly but steadily growing world market new developing country exporters are gaining market share at the expense of existing producers. These producers try to stay ahead by raising productivity and through diversification and innovation.
Despite considerable barriers to entry -- the need for capital, know-how and infrastructure, to name but a few -- the industry is continuously attracting new entrants. Kenya, Ecuador and Zimbabwe, the rapidly growing exporters of the last decade, are already "established" suppliers to their ambitious new competitors in China, India, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Malawi, Mexico, Palestine, Peru, South Africa and Zambia, and a host of other countries.
The successful non-European suppliers are blessed with favourable natural climatic conditions, but they are thousands of miles away from the main European and North American markets. And these are highly perishable products. Yet the level of efficiency achieved in the industry is such that these countries, despite the many logistical problems that they need to solve, can and do compete with European suppliers who are much closer to their principal markets.
For few internationally traded goods is time-to-market as important as for the cut flower industry. Flowers are very sensitive to the treatment that they receive once they have been cut. Strict control of humidity, temperature and air quality are essential for delivering an attractive product to the market. Growers rely heavily on an efficient post-harvest chain of handlers, storage and transport. Indeed, in the absence of a "cold-chain" it is practically impossible for even the most efficient producers to sell their produce on the main "northern" markets.
Organization is thus the key to success in this industry. This was clear to the Dutch growers who nearly a century ago set up the first auction which allowed them to obtain a fair return on their efforts and enabled Holland to become a principal producer and the major cut flower trading nation in the world. It was also clear to growers in such countries as Colombia and Kenya who, despite having no sizeable domestic market of their own, managed to achieve spectacular production growth and now rank among the top five exporters in the world.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 provides an overview of the industry: where are the main markets; which are the main exporting and importing countries; which are the main traded products? Section 2 discusses the characteristics of the industry: growing; post-harvest handling; the importance of strict quality control; price trends; the role of governments. Section 3 discusses some recent developments: the changing role of the Netherlands; the attention given to higher ecological and labour standards; the rising influence of supermarkets on the growing and trading of cut flowers. The last section draws conclusions and makes some observations on the future of the industry. [author]
