Anniversary edition of the Trade Fair: "The success of the fair is a Royal FloraHolland-wide achievement"

Nearly 25 years to the day: that's how long the Trade Fair has existed in 2025. In a quarter of a century, our biggest trade fair has grown into an event of international stature and of great commercial importance to both growers and buyers. This fair would not exist without intensive cooperation between different departments of Royal FloraHolland.

Value for both growers and buyers
A floating singer wearing a metre-long white dress, toasting together and three promising, sustainable innovations on stage at the Sustainability Award. And, more importantly, buyers and growers from all over the world who met and did business in Aalsmeer. This - in a nutshell - is the outcome of Trade Fair 2025. In 2025 trade fair and events manager Britt Bakhuizen (Royal FloraHolland) was involved in the Trade Fair for the sixth time. "If you want to stay relevant as a trade fair, you constantly have to innovate. The market is changing rapidly and the key thing for us is to stay in tune with it. To do this, we desperately need our colleagues from other departments."

2024 saw the launch of Fit For Future, a reorganisation at Royal FloraHolland designed to ensure better cooperation between different departments. This is where Britt and her colleagues reaped the benefits last year. "Cooperation with different departments in the organisation felt more natural, making things run more smoothly than before. Everyone knew that this Trade Fair is not just a Trade Fairs & Events department thing, but something we work on together". Britt and her colleagues gathered input from relevant internal and external stakeholders: what trends do we see in our sector, and what does that mean for the design of the Trade Fair? Their input is indispensable when it comes to organising a rewarding Trade Fair. But, as Britt explains, that's not the only thing. "It also creates support, which is key, as our colleagues are the Trade Fair's most important ambassadors." Those combined forces and knowledge ensured a successful anniversary edition in 2025. "That we manage to position this fair so well in the market, by being valuable to buyers and growers, is a Royal FloraHolland-wide achievement. We can all be super proud of this."

A puzzle to be solved together
Organising the Trade Fair is more complex than many outsiders might think. You walk onto the show floor and, first and foremost, you see how beautiful and sleek the whole thing looks. Many hours, days, weeks and sometimes months of work go into this. This includes the efforts of Dirk Jan Hunnekink, Facility Management project manager at Royal FloraHolland. He has to ensure that the framework conditions for the Trade Fair (i.e. power supply, sanitation, cleaning and security) are arranged on time, within budget and to everyone's satisfaction. This is a complicated job, especially as the contours of the 30,000 sq m area and the way the area is laid out change with every edition. Dirk Jan: "So it's not like you can create a one-time blueprint that can be used again year after year. Every year is a new puzzle we have to figure out."

Cooperation with the Trade Fairs & Events department is the key to a successful event. Dirk Jan is a permanent member of the Trade Fair project group and last year was his fifth trade fair. "The number of stands, the decoration, the fringe programme: everything has an effect on the work our logistics colleagues have to do." Our colleagues from Real Estate & Facility Management and Trade Fairs & Events know how to work with one another better and better. Much to Dirk Jan's delight, the manager of the latter department gave a presentation on the many kilometres of pipes laid and cartloads of waste removed thanks to the efforts of his colleagues. "That recognition and acknowledgement is vital in a successful collaboration. You can see and know what other people are doing, which makes it even easier to piece together this complex puzzle."

Commercial success and connection go hand in hand
What does the Trade Fair actually provide? The simplest answer is: inspiration and (new) commercial contacts for growers and buyers. But there are also unmissable gains on a relational level, as account manager Natalie van den Bos well knows. During the Trade Fair, she and her colleagues always put a number of growers in the spotlight by visiting their stands with a Royal FloraHolland manager or board member. "A working visit to a nursery usually happens from management and board members when there's something going on. But this is not the case with these growers: they are happy and have something special, such as a nice logistics innovation. This makes visiting them with someone like Leendert-Jan Plaisier incredibly valuable."

During one of these stand visits, a board member or manager is a really way of seeing how the land lies with our growers: how do they see Royal FloraHolland? What do they like, and what exactly are they struggling with? "And it also works the other way round: growers can put their questions directly to someone with influence, who also listens to them," says Natalie. "The fact that time is made for our growers in this way really contributes to the sense of belonging in our cooperative. We make the cooperative together, and with these visits we make this idea of togetherness tangible."