"Royal FloraHolland: "Holland's Wall Street for flowers"

Royal FloraHolland is a showcase for Dutch expertise in logistics. More than 12-billion plants and flowers – including more than 90% of Holland’s own output – change hands each year at Royal FloraHolland’s four marketplaces throughout the country. The contribution to Holland’s economy is profound: more than 250,000 jobs are the product directly and indirectly of the flower markets.

Flora Holland itself is a cooperative with 4500 members, 9,000 suppliers, 2,500 customers, and 3000 employees. The largest of the markets is at Aalsmeer, just below Schipol Airport, south of the center of Amsterdam. Here, in a huge concrete bunker-like building, hundreds of mini-trucks hauling wagons full of plants and flowers whizz around other workers on smaller vehicles in an area the size of 200 soccer fields – more than 775 square meters (the entire area on which the Aalsmeer installation sits is roughly the size of Monaco) . The plants arrive daily, usually overnight, for the flower auction five days a week, which starts at 6am and ends around 10 am. Elsewhere in the building, Royal FloraHolland customers – flower sellers ranging from mom and pop outlets to mega chains such as Tesco in the UK – are bidding against the clock on the millions of plants and flowers being sold each day.

Click here to read the full in-depth report Forbes wrote on FloraHolland.