Hello to the Flower Market

 

On our way to Amsterdam and about an hour out of Delft, we stopped at the FloraHolland Aalsmeer Flower Auction, which is close to Holland's largest airport, Schiphol. This vast auction warehouse--an international trading platform for flowers and plants--ships merchandise literally all over the world on the day it's sold.

 

While we waited for Dirk to park the bus, Hilbren explained the details of the auction. Covering 243 acres (Wikipedia says it's the largest "building by footprint in the world"), it opens very early every day and employs over 4,000 people. Flowers from all over the world (Europe, Ecuador, Columbia, Ethiopia, Kenya, etc.) are traded and more than 20 million are sold daily with a 15% increase around Valentine's Day and Mother's Day--over 12 billion a year! That adds up to 4.4 billion euros annually.

I wonder how many football fields would fit in here. Each section on the floor is numbered, like a stadium.

Traffic is hectic on the floor where all the plants and flowers are moved around the warehouse on pallets. Much of the their movement is automated on tracks running this way and that. In other areas, workers stand on a fork-lift type machine, like a Segway, pulling pallets to and from the auction. Sometimes, they use a type of hand cart to pull the pallets in and out of line. It is organized chaos! And quite incredible to watch.

Buyers enter the refrigerators and look at the goods, take notes on what they want, and may call a customer about bidding on a particular item.

It works the opposite of an auction in the United States. In other words, the prices start high and work their way down. Entering an early bid gets a buyer what he/she wants at the highest price.

The buyers sit in a theatre-style room--30 to a row, 10 rows deep, with everyone on a computer and wearing headphones. Pallets wind their way in and out of the room on those automated tracks, like slow-moving train cars. Buyers view and bid continuously and electronically.
 

Automated clocks are mounted on the wall (a total of 38 auction clocks) plus a photo of the flower or plant currently open for bids and other automated information. The bidders only get a few seconds to take action before the product makes its way out of the room and is shipped off. Bidding activities continue until everything is sold.



This photo was taken from the bus after leaving the flower market on our way to Amsterdam (so it's not one of my best)--fields and greenhouses along the way, growing all of these beautiful flowers which eventually make their way through the market headed to Schipol. It was an interesting and fun stop.