Today was a very early start. We had to wake up with the sun at around 5:30 to get on a private bus at 6:00 in order to drive about 25 minutes to the Royal FloraHolland, a cooperative of 5300 flower producers all around the world that hold online flower auctions.

The Royal FloraHolland was an absolutely massive factory taking up 1,739,769 square meters specialized in preparing tulips, hyacinths, and other flowers for delivery all over the Netherlands. During the peak of the tulip season the factory can deliver around 100 million flowers to customers in a day. The logistics required for this is ridiculous and to make it even more difficult the flowers have to be delivered within 48 hours due to their short lifespan. To make it possible, the Royal FloraHolland is one of the most advanced factories I have ever seen. There were hundreds of employees all driving around on mini motorized carts like it was a city. Even using arms to show when they were turning and so on. These carts could easily attach to crates of flowers, allowing for transportation throughout the factory timelessly. Furthermore, there were rail systems in the ground that pulled the crates of flowers around without the need for any human. This meant that flowers went from packaging to the delivery station in just minutes. Although I have never seen an Amazon warehouse, I imagine it would be somewhat similar to this except I know that they do not use these rail systems and not everyone gets their own cart to drive. To emphasize the effectiveness of the system, each flower is only in the factory for max around 90 minutes.

I was not expecting the factory to be so large as everything in the Netherlands so far has been extremely tiny in an effort to save as much space as possible and stay sustainable. This factory reminded me of something you would find in an industrial zone in the United States. Furthermore, even in the Royal FloraHolland the workers brought their bikes. They are everywhere there is quite literally no escape. I guess they are used to get around the factory for those who don’t have access to the mechanized carts, but never would you find bikes in a factory in the States. We finished the tour early at around 8:30 and then left to go to De Tulperij to see the production part of the Tulip Industry.

At De Tulperij the owner, Daan Jansze took us to look at the Tulips and taught us about the process of planting the bulbs and harvesting them. I found it really interesting just how perfect the Netherlands is to grow tulips. For example, tulips require about 3 months of sub 40 degree weather and a lot of water in order to grow. The Netherlands climate matches that, and on the farm, the ground water is only 65 centimeters below the surface, which is very high. This means there is no requirement for any additional irrigation and as a result, is much more sustainable. Also, it was interesting to learn about the cross breeding and mutations. The Jansze’s were very lucky to find an orange tulip, a rarer color that is significant to the Dutch. When breeding it they created more and more and were able to make more money due to the rarity. Something notable about today is the difference between the two companies we visit. De Tulperij is a small family owned farm that has been run by the Jansze’s for 97 years. This meant that they were more focused on the customer experience at the visit giving us information, a tour, food, souvenirs and even a video presentation. In contrast, the Royal FloraHolland, a multinational cooperative, had a self guided tour where we did not even interact with a single employee of the factory. They make enough money to care less about guests and as a result provide less of an experience. Tourism is necessary for De Tulperij’s survival and the two experiences showed that.