More continental sales for Kenyan growers

Has Africa the potential to become an important market for rose growers? According to Kenyan rose grower Michael Obwacha of Flora Bene it has. "Africans are increasingly using flowers for special occasions. For coming Mother's Day (May 14), for example, we supplied 25 percent more roses than last year, mainly in Egypt and Algeria", says Obwacha. All Flora Bene's Mother's Day shipments already left the farm.

Michael Obwacha and Lydia Mutahi at the IFTEX in Nairobi, Kenya.

Changing culture Africa
Flora Bene mainly exports its roses to Russia, Holland, the Middle East, Australia and Africa. Over the years, they see an increasing demand for roses from Africa. Obwacha assumes that this is due to the changing attitude towards flowers. "People are now realizing that they need flowers to celebrate and decorate an event. And for these decorations Africans prefer the large head flowers."

Next to events, increasingly more flowers are being used for holidays, such as Mother's Day, Valentine's Day and Father's Day. Over the years, more and more people started to celebrate this holiday and, at the same time, increasingly more people decide to celebrate it with flowers." According to Obwacha, flowers are being made important for these days. "Currently, you see a lot of flower sellers on the streets and the number of sellers increased over the years."

This increasing demand for flowers resulted in an increase in sales to Africa for Flora Bene. "Compared to last year, we sold about 25 percent more flowers for Mother's Day in Africa, and mainly to Cairo, Egypt and Algeria.

Mother's Day compared to last year
Even though the increasing demand from African countries, this year's Mother's Day isn't better compared to last year. Next to Africa, we also sold some flowers directly to clients in Holland and the prices were not as high as we expected. According to Obwacha, this was mainly due to the weather conditions of the past months. "For about three weeks now, it is raining in Kenya, but before that time, we had to deal with extreme high temperatures and a lack of water and moisture. As a consequence, the flower heads were not able to develop fully, which resulted in a crop with smaller head sizes." And smaller head sizes leads to lower prices. "They were lower than expected, but fortunately still OK. All in all, we are quite satisfied with this years' Mother's Day."

For more information
Flora Bene
Michael Obwacha
Email: sales@florabena.com
www.florabene.com