Eline van den Berg:
"Knowledge exchange a core mission at Holland Flower Alliance"
Our interactive packaging workshop sparked lots of conversation about the enormous variety of flower packaging in the market, and the benefits of standardisation.
by Eline van den Berg
Did you know there are more than 300 different types of flower packaging boxes? The sheer amount of size and quality combinations means this is not an easy topic to tackle, however we notice more and more industry leaders with this topic at the top of their agenda.
Facilitating knowledge exchange is a core mission at the Holland Flower Alliance – we believe all sections of the supply chain can benefit from the experience of others, and strive to make this happen.
The launch of the Holland Flower Alliance website was a lovely highlight for us – and everyone joined us for coffee and cupcakes to celebrate.
It is great that my first event as project manager of the Holland Flower Alliance was so enjoyable and rewarding.
Sustainability and cooperation
The recent exchange programme between KLM Cargo Pilots and staff, Royal FloraHolland, was especially exciting – it is the first time such a visit has gone ahead, so this made for a really unique experience!
The KLM Cargo teams visited Royal FloraHolland to experience where and how the ULDs are received, how the pallets are broken down, and how the unpacking of the boxes, and the preparation of the flowers for the selling process takes place at an import flower handling company.
A few weeks later, Royal FloraHolland paid a visit to the KLM Cargo sorting system. Very impressive!
Our Information Sharing working group is another great example of cooperation in the supply chain in aid of a common goal. Thanks to the work of the group we have executed a successful pilot in which we followed about 150 flower shipments, all the way from grower to Dock Services of Royal FloraHolland.
How did we do it? We combined product data with shipment data, and then assigned both sets of data to a unique identifier, meaning we could trace the shipment on piece level.
The Information Sharing working group is now busy devising what the next steps are in scaling up and making this a reality for the volumes we handle on a day to day basis at AMS.
The work of the HFA-group is made possible through close and positive cooperation between our partners.
In 2018 we are focusing on topics such as managing waste, sustainability, the integration of new technologies, and the importance of cool chain management in the flower supply chain.
As we finalise our plans for 2018, our focus is on running our own pilot projects in areas such as packaging. We prepare to do some tests in the supply chain with different boxes, so we can define where there is space for further standardisation. I’m looking forward to the first results!
Source: Holland Flower Alliance