Dutch flower traders provide glimpse of Brexit consequences
Officials at Royal FloraHolland, the world’s largest trading center for plants and flowers, say they are already bracing for their No. 2 customer’s departure. The June referendum did not have an immediate impact on the flower trade, but UK prime minister Theresa May’s announcement last week that she plans to trigger a two-year window for exit talks by the end of March has put the Dutch flower traders on a deadline.
The traders — who trade more than 12 billion flowers per year and whose international business has a 40 percent market share — are now looking for new markets. This decision is going to impact links down the supply chain, particularly in air cargo, as the traders are heavily reliant on it to move their cargo.
“The Brexit, certainly for our industry, is not positive,” said Edwin Wenink, director of the center’s Floricultural Logistics Optimization Worldwide, or FLOW, program. “You can already see it coming. At the moment still we do not see a huge effect, but we can imagine in the future there will be an effect.”
Wenink and other Dutch officials peg that future date at two and a half years from today, roughly the date of May’s planned “hard break” from the European Union.
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