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Iceland Eruption Creates Havoc For Kenyan Flower Sector

September 2nd, 2010

The earlier closedown of Europe’s airports due to the Iceland volcanic eruption caused panic in Kenya’s flower sector which created staggering losses.

The eruption  created worldwide travel consequences and local travel chaos after travel agencies cancelled flights in Europe.

Kenya’s flower industry commonly peaks in May as western countries go into late spring & summer months.

In those important months multiple  holidays help to create customers  for local and international flowers. An increasing number of people order discount flowers which has created a new and different pressure for the marketplace.

New crises  came at a terrible time  according to the Kenyan Flower Council which says  that the country lost over 3000 tons of flowers  from the latest  flight  cancellations .

Multiple  planes that were at the Kenyan airport  at  the time of the  closures  were constrained to fly around the incident adding hundreds of miles. A corporation  with a plane in Kenya had to hold up expansion plans by weeks because its new aircraft was contrained  to fly around the incident    postponing  their timetables .

There have been  many  complaints that the European Air Safety Council had overreacted . The economic impact is yet to be total, but preliminary  estimates are in the hundreds of billions (US$) when all affected industries are included in the total.

British Airways CEO Willie Walsh summed up the feelings of many by saying that the European Air Safety Council made “a gross overreaction to a very minor risk.”

These last issues  for the Kenyan flower sector is in the wake of a 33% downturn in the industry  in 2009.

Many of these problems stem from a 30%  slip  in orders from Europe because  of the Global Recession. Their lessening  in orders is most straight off akin  to layoffs and hiring freezes in Europe, their main buyers  .

Meanwhile, countries such as Columbia have been more than amenable to send  their flowers to  Europe in the wake of the decay of demand for flowers in the US  adding even more pressure to Kenya’s flower  marketplace  .

Also putting pressure on the whole  flower sector  is an increasing amount of buyers looking for discount flowers. Many of these buyers want top  quality products for prices presently associated with cheap flowers.

Workers will mostly feel  of these downturns with large layoffs planned for many of the huge  flower growers, buyers, exporters, and related industries. Some of these companies are also looking at selling cheap discount flowers to diversify their sales.


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