The Aalsmeer Flower Auction

This morning I did something I very rarely do - I got up voluntarily long before the sun rose!
"Why??" you might ask (particularly if you know me well enough to know that I am the antithesis of a morning person). Because I wanted to go to the Alsmeer flower auction - and one has to get up awfully early to do such a thing. I walked to the designated pick-up area for the bus at just after 6:40 a.m. to catch the bus by 7 a.m. And was it worth it? Unquestionably.

We had a guided tour of the facility and saw how entire batches of flowers are bought and sold in seconds. Interestingly, in the bidding rooms, they start with the highest price for each batch and work down (yep!) - a system designed to make things work very quickly.

Here, flowers are traded from and to all parts of the world, with 60% of them grown in the Netherlands. On average, 17 million flowers and 2 million plants pass through the auction house every day and are sold through 13 auction clocks. (The buyers, by the way, arrive well before 6 a.m. as the auction begins at 6:30 a.m.) More than 7 billion flowers and 150 million plants come through this facility each year. This is where the international pricing for flowers is determined.

In some auction rooms the buyers view the actual flowers within the room , but in others (as with the roses) they simply see a stock photo on a large screen (although many would have walked through the refrigeration rooms earlier to see what they'd be purchasing). Of course, they have a very good idea of what they're getting as they do this every day.

Today the volume was up from normal (20+ million flowers) as this is Valentine's week - the busiest of the year. All of this happens in one the largest trade building in the world (a million square meters - which is absolutely enormous) with about 2,000 auction employees and another 12,000 other workers doing what it takes to make it all work. Amazing stuff.

The beautiful flowers and the hustle and bustle of it all was just amazing.

And see the guys on the orange vehicles towing the racks? They must all be mad! They drive like maniacs with no obvious set of driving rules (though we were told there are some) - but we saw a couple run gently into one another, and actually one guy who, because he looked up and waved at all of us on the catwalk above, caused a little crash! This is actually pretty serious, as the flowers are guaranteed by the auction house, and means that a shop steward needs to get there asap to evaluate. Any damage done will mean that the buyer gets money back (in this case a handful of white roses), so this doesn't happen very often - and he was clearly embarrassed.

This film is quite short, but you have to pay attention as the individual shots will go by very quickly - but still gives a feel for what we saw today.