Importing from Colombia brings certain connotations and preconceptions. There is the usual banter, and even when you’re just travelling to the South American country the suggestion of what you’re going to bring back with you is constant. The reality is that the various exporting industries, from coffee to coal and flowers to fruit, are fighting relentlessly to combat misconceptions when it comes to the country’s trading culture and its government.
The Colombian flower industry sprung up around 40 years ago when US carnation growers set up businesses and glasshouses mostly on the outskirts of Bogotá. Up there with petroleum, coffee, coal, nickel and bananas, cut flowers are one of the country’s biggest exports. Providing the perfect conditions and available land for carnation production, the opportunities for flower growers in Colombia were soon recognised and taken advantage of. Now more than 7,000 hectares are dedicated to flower production and the Colombian flower repertoire ranges from carnations to spray carnations, roses and spray roses, alstroemerias, lilies, sunflowers and hydrangeas, with every colour and variety in between.
What’s more, the last 15 years have seen a comprehensive ethical and environmental accreditation. Florverde, which is a GlobalGAP equivalent, oversees 50 per cent of the growers’ part of Colombian flower exporter group Asocolflores. “It’s a marque of uniformity for sustainable growers, but backed by complete implementation,” says Florverde director Ximena Franco-Villegas, who has been a driving force behind the scheme for three years and instrumental in Florverde’s latest link-up with the Rainforest Alliance. “There is a full system of field inspection for safety, the environment and social rights. We advise growers and guide them.”
Adam Porges, chair of the Flower Import Trade Association (FITA) and owner of importer All Seasons Flowers, based in Middlesex, has been importing flowers from Colombia for 20 years and has been part of FITA, which deals mainly with Colombian flowers, since it started its life in the mid-1980s. He has seen the industry grow from its very beginnings. “It was logistics, or lack of them, that made us form the association in the first place because at the time there were no direct flights from Bogotá to London,” he says. “As an association, along with the airlines, we managed to negotiate the best deal for price and quality of product. Colombian flowers are now the best to have. The top UK florists look out for them as they are visually impressive and last the distance.”
UK passion
When you take a look at where Colombian flowers are being exported, the UK market takes quite a share. Around 85 per cent of production is sent to its main and closest market, the US, but it’s significant that the UK takes four per cent of the remainder. In fact, the UK market has become important to the Colombian industry in the interest of spreading the risk and has become known for its strict quality standards for roses and carnations. “Exports to the UK have declined slightly, but we are putting this down to an uneasy economic climate and we are pretty much back to sending four per cent of our exported production now,” says Alberto Lora Aguancua, executive director of trade for export association Proexport. “We have been running various initiatives in the UK to get Colombian growers and suppliers communicating with retail buyers and florists. We have also been working hand in hand through our London office with flower wholesalers to encourage people to use and ask for Colombian flowers more. In three months, we targeted and got subsidised Colombian flowers into 150 florists.”
Colombian flowers are gaining an enviable reputation in the UK, with their full-bodied, large, tight-head roses coming to represent both quality and the obvious aesthetic qualities. But quality comes at a price, and the recession in the UK has taken its toll, with both price pressure and the contraction of the UK independent florist industry.
Online high-end supermarket flower outlets like Waitrose and Marks & Spencer have also got the Colombian flower bug, with the top-end quality roses, carnations and spray carnations fitting in well with the offer. Bogotá-based Alexandra Farms has been supplying M&S’s online flower service with various new varieties of roses for two years and hopes to continue into the actual stores. The company’s president, Jose Azout, is passionate about bringing the scent back to roses in the market and is working on ways to bring the perfect rose to market - one that has both scent and shelf life.
“We test around 100 roses a year to produce around five,” says Azout, who sends around 10-15 per cent of the company’s production to the UK. “It takes a lot of investment, but we must continue to innovate and bring new varieties to the market.”
According to Azout, demand for roses is up in the UK, with the scented heritage varieties proving very important for wedding events and the like.
Co-owner of rose producer Linda Colombiana, Maurico Arenas, sends five per cent of the company’s rose production to the UK and has struggled to get into the market. “There has been a change over the last five years and smaller heads have been more popular because of price,” he says. “We grow the magnificent Freedom roses [a full-bodied, deep red rose] but the UK is more interested in Kenyan roses. Red roses are very important before Christmas and at Valentines’ Day. The UK has also seemed more interested in carnations and spray carnations, but we have 70 different varieties of roses - 34 hectares of standard roses and six hectares of spray roses.
“We’d love to work with supermarkets in the UK, but we do not provide the types they like. We get a higher price from supermarkets in the likes of Japan and Russia. People who love flowers know how much money it takes to grow and transport them, but also achieve great quality. I’d love to go stronger in the UK market.”
Flower power?
Porges says that although the UK supermarkets do not have the same grip on the flower industry as they do on the fresh fruit and veg market, the last 10 years have seen a shift in power. “There are lots of sub-sectors to the flower industry in the UK, but the high street has definitely seen a decline in florists,” says the FITA chair, whose business majors in importing Colombian flowers to the UK above any other. “Businesses have just been giving up. But there are other factors as to why the sector is more difficult. There has been a massive change in exchange rates that has hit relations between Colombian and UK traders, the growth of the supermarket flower sector, and third an increase in demand around the world. I have seen more change in this industry in the last two years than I have in 20 years.”
With controversial plans for seafreight to some day become commonplace for Colombian flowers, will the ultimate goal to serve UK supermarkets compromise the sector’s hard work? Only time will tell.
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