Kenya: Panda Flowers' sights set on Valentine's Day

"Now it's time to prune", says Paul Wanderi of Panda Flowers. This Kenyan farm is preparing for Valentines Day (February 14) and is busy with pruning to avoid having extra volumes at the moment, as the demand is low, but have good volumes during the Valentine sales period as the demand shall be high.

Paul Wanderi at the IFTEX 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya.

From November 26 up to December 3, 30-40% of the crop in the 40 ha greenhouse of Panda Flowers is being pruned. After doing this, the production volume of their crop will increase by 40 to 45 percent. "We look at the demand of this year and we try to reach the desired volumes", he says.

And for this rose grower, it is possible to check the demand before growing them. They supply the direct market only and have received most of their orders for 2017 already. So, the orders for Valentine's Day too. And they seem to be similar to last year, even though this years Valentine's Day will be celebrated on a weekday - which is known to be a day with more sales than Saturday or Sunday. But fortunately, they did not have any complaints regarding their sales for Valentine's Day 2016. "As we work with year round prices, these were also set for the Valentine's sales at that time. On top of that, we pre-sold our extra volumes at even higher prices than the contracted prices", he says.

The main markets of Panda Flowers are The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, UK, Russia and USA. Since 2013 they are supplying the market directly and are very pleased. "Over the years, we have created a wider and more reliable customer base. This resulted in a sales increase of 20-25 percent, even with the low demand during this time of the year."

For more information
Panda Flowers
Paul Wanderi
Email: wanderi@pandaflowers.co.ke
www.pandaflowers.co.ke