Aalsmeer Market Expo ran alongside Horti Fair from October 15-17 within the flower auction’s Flora Holland Aalsmeer Market. Some 500 growers displayed a vast assortment of cut flowers and plants for exporters and wholesalers to see.
This year, more than 50 new varieties of flowers and plants were introduced at the market, many of which will go on to be nominated for the FloraHolland Awards 2009.
Among the new products and concepts on display was Dutch flower nursery Heinje’s new brands Rondo King and Rondo Queen. The brands aim to market Heinje’s rhododendron plants and communicate to consumers how to care for the product. The new branding will be available in February 2009 and aims to combat consumer opinion that the plants are too expensive.
Dutch company Happy Roses, the alliance between growers River Flowers and FJ Zandbergen & Zn, was also at the expo promoting its new development called the Happy Rose, which consists of a range of freeze-dried dyed roses that can be used as gifts or as part of a company’s promotional material. The Happy Rose range is intended for the gift shop and hotel market, and the rose can be dyed in the colours of the hotel chain.
And Orient Orchids is hoping to introduce its added-value orchid gift boxes into UK supermarkets. The company, which grows more than
3.4 hectares of orchids in the Netherlands, supplies single orchid gift boxes to supermarkets in France and Germany, but has yet to break the UK multiples.
Orient Orchids’ Ron Olierhoek told FPJ: “The orchids are a great idea for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day, but they have not been taken up by the UK supermarkets yet. Woolworths in the UK stocks them; however, they have to have them packaged in the Woolworths’ brand.”
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