Flower companies caught up in sea transport dilemma
A worker at Expression Flora inspects flowers at the grading and packaging section of the flower firm. Trials are under way to use sea freight for flowers. File
The fear that Kenya’s naturally grown flowers could lose sheen while on transit has held back plans to switch to sea transport, dashing exporters’ hopes of reducing exposure to the cost of aviation fuel.
Growers at the floriculture hub of Naivasha - though beset by high airfreight cost - said the immediate concern of the Sh70 billion-a-year export trade is how fast Kenya’s freshly cut blooms can get to consumers in key markets in Europe, US and Asia.
“Preferably, flowers should reach the end-user within 48 hours of harvesting and thus sea freight to other continents is not feasible at the moment,” said Mr Joseph Kariuki, executive officer of the Lake Naivasha Growers Group, a lobby for 48 farms that grow flowers and other horticultural crops in Naivasha.
The practice at the moment is that exporters hoping to fetch good prices have to airlift their freshly cut flowers to ensure they get into the hands of buyers in key consuming countries before they begin to wilt.
One of the dangers of over-reliance on air transport was highlighted early last year when local exporters reported losses running into billions of shillings when the Icelandic volcano disrupted air transport for only three days.
The plan to switch to sea transport has been on the cards of the local horticultural industry since campaigns against climate change gained momentum in 2007, forcing players to seek alternatives to air transport, a top emitter of harmful carbon.
From last year, the Kenya Horticultural Crops Authority has raised fresh hopes when it started to undertake some trials to switch to sea transport in partnership with some local fresh produce exporters but these are yet to get off the ground.
“We have been undertaking these trials for close to one year – each with different degree of success - but we are not ready to go public about them until we get to the point where we feel we are confident enough,” said a general manager at one of the firms involved in the trials.
For years Kenya has relied on the natural quality of her flowers to outcompete those grown artificially within Europe. It takes at least two weeks to get fresh produce from Kenya to Europe by sea, says Jane Ngige, CEO of Kenya Flower Council. “While trials with carnation flowers have shown we can successfully export by sea under controlled conditions, roses, which represent 60 per cent of the country’s flower production have proved too sensitive to be transported over a long period of time,” Mrs Ngige told the Business Daily Tuesday.
Special conditions
But the spike in international crude oil prices have seen financially-muscled farms investing in specialised equipment to facilitate the switch to sea transport.
Industry insiders estimate that sea transport will bring cargo costs down by at least 60 per cent, significantly cutting costs in an industry where freight accounts for at least 40 per cent of firms’ annual operation costs.
The new thinking is that by using special refrigerated containers where conditions such as temperature and humidity can be monitored, flowers can be transported by sea for several days without getting spoilt.
Mr Kenyatta granted an import duty remission of 15 per cent on aseptic plastic bags used to store fruit extract, 10 per cent down from the 25 per cent stipulated in the East African Community’s Common External Tariff (CET) structure.
