Brief overview of South African floriculture sector

Commercial flower growers often say that if property marketing is all about location, location, location, then flowers are about quality, quality, quality. It does not have to be top quality, but it must mean consistent, reliable quality. The international flower market expects nothing less.

One of SA's key figures in the flower export trade is René Schoenmaker, Johannesburg director of Bergflora, a major flower exporting company. It joined he South African Flower Export Council three years ago as an associate member, helping SA's 138 flower exporters become more competitive.

Schoenmaker says only about 10% of ordinary cut flowers, such as roses, carnations, chrysanthemums and lilies, are exported - the rest are sold locally, while 90% of proteas and other fynbos flora are exported.

SA's export flower-growing regions are the Western Cape, the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands and, to a lesser extent, Gauteng's highveld. The flowers are grown either in the open, under shade cloth or in greenhouses. Because of SA's diverse climate and geographic spread, some flowers can be grown under shade cloth in some parts of the country and can also, at other times of the year, be grown under glass in controlled temperatures in other areas. This makes it possible to grow certain varieties of exportable flowers for 11 months of the year.

The EU is SA's largest market for cut flowers, with Holland being the most important destination because it is the hub of the European flower trade and because of the seven Dutch flower auctions. With about 100,000 transactions a day, these auctions are fast-moving, transparent, and lead to price stability over the long run.

SA competes in this frenetic market against about 60 other countries, including Israel, Kenya, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, the US and France.

The flowers are bid for and bought by wholesalers for distribution across Europe and beyond. At retail level, the products are found in flower markets, garden centres, florists' shops, supermarkets, chain stores - and in the pots and buckets of hundreds of pavement flower sellers throughout the cities of Europe.

Apart from the Dutch auctions, Germany is the largest single market, followed by the UK and France. Other important markets for South African growers are the US, and the Middle and Far East.

Of all SA's export flowers, none are as special as the indigenous protea. Because SA has two separate protea-growing regions with different climates during the year - KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape - they complement each other particularly well. Although SA's main flowering season is from July to December, the country can still produce different varieties of proteas, albeit in lesser quantities, during most of the other months of the year.

"Although proteas are indigenous to our country, South African varieties are eagerly cultivated for the huge European market in Australia, Peru, Chile and Hawaii, and even in European countries themselves such as Portugal, Spain and the Canary Islands," says Schoenmaker.

SA's flower growers can count on their products being reasonably priced in Europe for up to seven months of the year. "When it's summer here it's winter in Europe, and they can't grow many flowers in their winter because it's too expensive," says Schoenmaker. "That is why we can airfreight our summer flowers into the long European winter and they will be competitively priced . But when it's winter here we are not all that competitive, except for our proteas, which are always in demand."

"The EU slaps stiffer import duties on our flowers than on other African countries. That is unfair - the same rules should apply."

Modern logistics in the form of a continuous cold chain (which can be adjusted from 2ºC to 7ºC) from local grower to foreign consumer, make it possible for South African flowers to shrug off the intense tropical heat of, say, Singapore, as well as the bitter cold of a Siberian winter.

The cold chain begins in growers' cool rooms immediately after cutting and continues in the refrigerated trucks that take the flowers - packed in long, white, ventilated cardboard boxes - to a freight forwarder's cool-storage rooms at either of South Africa's two main airports. They are lifted into the holds of aircraft, where the required degree of coldness can be maintained for even the longest flights.

allafrica.com