‘Innovating transport packaging – we are doing that with and for the supply chain'

When it comes to flowers, over 90% of supply is traded in multi-use packaging. Royal FloraHolland's packaging unit pool includes over 15 million flower packaging that are in use by the floriculture chain.

Whether it concerns an auction trolley, a flower flower packaging or a plant tray, everyone in the sector uses one or more of Royal FloraHolland’s transport packaging. That is not surprising, because the standardised transport packaging in our pool ensure virtually every flower or plant reaches its final destination well-protected, efficiently, and as sustainably as possible. We regularly innovate our pool by responding to new trends, legislation, opportunities and the needs of growers or buyers. Paul van den Berg, Product Development Manager at Royal FloraHolland, says he works closely with growers and trading companies on the innovation of our transport packaging.

Smart(er) solutions
Paul explains: "When developing new multi-use transport packaging, we seek standardised solutions that clearly have added value for the supply chain. Standardisation ensures we can work efficiently and sustainably in the sector. Too much diversity of resources is not optimal for logistics processes. That means coming up with smart(er) solutions that can be used in logistics chain processes more widely and on a larger scale. We do this in close consultation with growers and buyers to get a good idea of whether a solution has sufficient added value for the overall supply chain."

Improving sustainability and transaction reduction
Improving the sustainability of transport packaging is a top priority for Royal FloraHolland. "We pick up on signs and monitor usage and trends in the market. Improving sustainability is an important trend, of course, especially with the new PPWR legislation coming our way. The use of reusable transport packaging is becoming even more important. We are also seeing a continuation of transaction reduction; customers of our customers are buying smaller and smaller product volumes. Everything has to be 'more frequent, faster and fresher'. At the same time, we are also seeing chain costs getting higher and higher as a result of, among other things, labour and transport, so the densest possible packaging configuration is important”, according to Paul.


Market demand is driving development
"In practice, the development of a new logistics resource often starts with a very specific demand or need from a group of growers and/or buyers. Unfortunately, not every desire of the market can be put into practice and we have to make choices. Developing and producing multi-use packaging involves large investments and we also develop for long-term use by different parties in the supply chain. We are not, therefore, going to take any chances. If the resource provides added value for a good number of growers and therefore offers sufficient potential, we will start working with a development team." Paul says there are some good recent examples of this: "Based on the desire of buyers to use less single-use cardboard, we developed the Fc595 low multi-use support shelving, which saves 100,000 kilos of cardboard a year, in collaboration with the Association of Wholesalers in Floricultural Products (on behalf of the Accelerators) and FPC Rose. At the end of September, the Eustoma product group also switched to this new low multi-use shelving. A combination of high demand and production setbacks temporarily led to limited availability, but that has been resolved fortunately.

Development of small raised flower packaging
The development of a small raised flower packaging is a new project. The actual idea comes from a group of Barberton daisy growers. One of the growers has started experimenting with the development of a flower packaging size which, among other things, eliminates the need for the cardboard collar for the 'Diamond packaging'. This potential new flower packaging has the base size of the existing small Fc566 flower packaging and the height of the Fc588 flower packaging."

"We first explored with the factory whether this is technically feasible. The outcome was positive and this allowed us to proceed with a 3D printed model for further investigation. This shows there are many more floriculture products that could benefit from this development. So far, the response from the trade and growers has been positive. This new development avoids the use of cardboard, saves on chain costs and meets the need for smaller sales units."

"The development of this new (Fc555) flower packaging is currently underway and still has a few steps to go through. So, this could see the birth of another new logistics resource that benefits the entire supply chain," Paul concludes enthusiastically.