Researchers from EC-Pack are stirring up waves by showing that fresh-cut flowers can be shipped successfully by conditioned reefer containers from Europe to America.

The first test container containing tulips, amaryllises and narcissuses found its way from Rotterdam to New York, arriving in excellent condition in time for Valentine’s Day. The sea journey had taken 7 days, clearance procedures in the harbour, another 7 days, and afterwards, the flowers still had an average vase-life of more than 7 days.

A second container with seafaring bulb flowers arrived in New York a month later, repeating the good results of its predecessor.

While the outcome of the first test container had proven that it is technically possible to ship flowers across the ocean, an addtional aim of the second test container was to gain understanding of the customs and handling procedures involved at the harbour, and to study the possibility of expediting such procedures.

This flowers-by-sea project was started with the aim of finding a cheaper means of transport for Dutch flowers to promising markets in America. Air transport, the traditional way to export fresh-cut flowers overseas, costs four to five times more.

The success of the test containers greatly pleases the project initiator (the Dutch Wholesalers’ Organisation for Horticultural Products - Vereniging voor Groothandelaren in Bloemisterijproducten), the main sponsor (Dutch Horticultural Product Board - Productschap Tuinbouw) and another sponsor, Pokon & Chrystal.

Experiments leading up to the shipping of the two containers began months before in the laboratories of Agrotechnology & Food Innovations in Wageningen, The Netherlands.

Many kinds of flowers – roses, chrysanthemums, tulips, irisses, narcisseses, amarylisses, lisianthuses, delphiniums, peony roses – were placed in cool cells under various conditions: wet/dry, horizontal/vertical, at various stages of opening, with/without pre-treatments, and different temperature-time combinations.

In addition, the right packaging played an important role with regards to factors such as reduction of moisture formation and stacking capacity.

Eventually, three types of flowers were chosen for the trips. The most ideal climatic conditions were also created within the reefer containers.

After customs check at Port Elizabeth in New York, the flowers were distributed to shops in Philaedelphia, Boston and Miami. Flowers were also sent to the University of North Carolina for quality control, and the findings correlated with those of control studies done in Wageningen. The quality of the sea-borne flowers were more than satisfactory, and in many cases, even superior to their air-borne counterparts (picture below).

Tulips which arrived by sea container (at right) compared to tulips which were airflown (at left).

A consumer test was also conducted by using the resources of an internet mail-order company in the US. All 122 bunches of flowers involved in this test were given the thumbs up for quality.