Our best read articles of 2021

The new year has started, but before looking forward to what 2022 has to offer, we would like to reflect on 2021. What were the most popular topics? Which articles were best read?

So - are you ready? Here we go. Below are the best-read articles of 2021*.

The article "World’s most sold machine to make spiral bouquets", an article on the Mecaflor hand-tied bouquets machine is the article that has been most read in 2021. With this machine, it takes only 5 minutes to train a non-skilled worker to create uniform and complex hand-tied bouquets. On top of the ease, the machine increases productivity by 30% to 50% and requires little technical knowledge and maintenance. Six years ago, this French company introduced their first machine and they have quickly consolidated their position as one of the leading manufacturers of hand-tied bouquet-making machines.

On the left: Untreated Red Furiosa. On the right: OptiBoost treated Red Furiosa

Besides the interest in creating bouquets, treating flowers becomes increasingly popular as well. And the article entitled “Our treated roses lead to 50% higher gross profit and 25% lower waste” shows the popularity as it is our second best-read article of 2021. The article is about OptiCept Technologies and their patented technology and machine for the shelf life extension of roses that is called OptiBoost In this article Ulf Hagman, Executive Chairman of OptiCept, shares the positive commercial test results, how the machine works, and their goal to bring the technology to growers and more countries.

In addition, acquisitions, and particularly farm acquisitions in Ecuador have been popular. The announcement that Elite Flower acquired QualisA takes the third spot in our best articles list and the announcement that Elite Farms acquires BellaRosa Group and Brown Breeding is sixth in the list.

The impact of weather on the crop and productivity are usually also hot topics, but this year, severe weather conditions in the Netherlands in February 2021 even destroyed greenhouses. The article "Dutch greenhouses collapsed because of snow" attracted a lot of attention and so this article is the fourth best read article.

Of course, we cannot miss an article on Valentine's Day in our "Best Read articles" list. And the demand has been high. On January 25 in 2021, Mauricio Ospina of Ecuadorian rose farm EQR told us about the unexpected high demand for Valentine's Day roses which resulted in them being practically sold out. This article takes the fifth spot in our list, closely followed, on spot 8, by our article, published on February 12, in which we reflect on Valentine's Day sales for growers and wholesalers. The clear conclusion that we could draw from this article is that the demand surpassed the supply for Valentine's Day 2021.

And don't forget the popularity of houseplants, as this article: "Hoya is finding its place among the field of popular houseplants" takes the seventh spot in our list. In this article, Bill Steen of Fleurizon talks about the popularity of Hoya and the fact that the demand isn't slowing down.

Besides Valentine's Day, Women's Day is an important flower holiday and particularly in Russia. However, this year, getting the flowers to Russia has been a challenge and in this article, which takes the ninth spot in our list, Warja Abrosimova of Dekker Chrysanten told us that Russian wholesalers were worried about Women's Day shipments.

And we end this top 10 with an article on Black Tulip Flowers. In this article, they mentioned that their V- Day 2021 sales went up and they talked about their 57ha expansion in Ethiopia

Find more of our best-read articles below:

*Our list contains only articles that were published in 2021, not articles that were clicked on in 2021.