The Largest Flower Auction in the World

Into the flower business

I started working back in 1986 in the flower business. Before that i have worked over 6 years in the meat processing industry. I had seen it and the work did not please me no more. So I was looking for something else. At one point i ended up at the flower auction in Aalsmeer. Essentially, VBA, VBA stands for United Flower Alsmeer. I started working at a box holder, later in this topic i will explain what this means. In this topic i'll explain how the process works of processing the flowers and plants that later in the day will go to their consumers .

The flow

Every evening from approximately 19:00 hours, the first truckloads of flowers in the area of ​​the VBA lot. These flowers go directly to the loading and unloading platform's far to be discharged. There are different transporters involved in this, of course, the flowers at the breeders already cut and put on water. All of these growers are members of the cooperative flower auction. Anyway, if the flowers are unloaded, they are delivered on Danish trolleys and carts at auction. The latter are larger than the Danish trolleys. Afterwards, these carts are drawn as if this process is called the carts leave the loading and unloading platforms, through an auction trolley carts with these flowers will continue to transport.

The transport

The transport of the flowers and plants are done by VBA employees, any kind of flower has its own installation location to be brought to. The carts with the flowers to be placed at various cold stores they are clockwise prepared for the next morning. The VBA has several cooling cells. Cooling cells are pretty big to! There are also brought flowers to the Import section, these are flowers that came from foreign growers. These flowers are usually delivered in large cardboard boxes.

           The clock

At about 07:00 am in the morning, the trolleys with the flowers are going towards the clock, this process is automatically and processed via conveyors in the ground. In this way the flowers with carts at once bought by the purchasers of the box holders. All the flowers that are nothave been sold be rotated as they say, and be destroyed. The breeder in question, which saw its flowers will be rotated will get a fee from the VBA. I do not know exactly how much, but still a nice amount the consumer have to pay for it indirectly when they buy flowers at the florist. Then comes the next process.

The distribution

The division aims to further distribute the purchased flowers. This division occurred in streets, these streets are long paths in which the flowers are brought up to be further divided. The distribution will take place after the flowers come from the auction, so the clock where the flowers are sold. This process is completely automatic until the flower containers have approached the spot were they are distibute further more. From this point, the craft again, because the bought flowers should be in the streets. It takes about the whole morning to devide the flowers and to complete it. Then the flowers will be distribute further more with motorized carts to the box holders.

The box holders

The box holders have bought their flowers and their flowers are going to be prepared to be packed. The flowers are packed in cardboard boxes for later in the day. The trucks will bring the flowers to either to the airport or to the rest of Europe or throughout the world. A box holders is actually a company that have customers worldwide. I myself have a worked a while at a box holder and i have wrapped flowers into cardboard boxes and you learn a lot about flowers and how to look for something unusual, such as diseases and insects. Some flowers have to go to a gas chamber to kill the insects, because almost all countries in the world do not want to have exotic insects. The flowers are subsequently approved by the inspection service and they give a certificate that the flowers may be transported to another country. The working hours where sometimes quite long, you work an average of 10 hours per day.

The import

The import department is a separate part of the VBA. Here are the flowers brought over by the foreign growers. In this section, the flowers are extracted and put on water. It also asks whether the flowers have the condition, you have to think about insects, snakes and spiders (sometimes happens), combustion of the flowers (the flowers sit tight in a box and this creates a process by which the temperature rises in the box and the flowers can burn) and whether the quality is good. If all went well then the flowers put on the carts and they drove to the cooling cells the next morning to be auctioned.
This was in broad terms the entire process at the flower business. Meanwhile, the VBA and Flora Holland merged and they have joined forces and these two are became indeed the largest flower auction in the world.

This was it for today, I see you on the next blog.

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