The earlier closing of Europe’s airports due to the Iceland volcanic eruption caused panic in Kenya’s flower businesses which created staggering losses.
The eruption created global travel consequences and local travel chaos after travel agencies cancelled flights in Europe.
Kenya’s flower industry ordinarily peaks in May as western countries go into late spring & summer months.
In those important months many holidays help to create customers for local and international flowers. An increasing number of people order discount flowers which has created a novel and dissimilar pressure for the market.
The latest issues came at the worst possible time according to the Kenyan Flower Council which says that the nation lost over 3000 tons of products from the new flight closures .
Numerous planes that were at the Kenyan airport during the time of the closures were forced to fly around the incident adding hundreds of miles. A business with a plane in Kenya had to holdup enlargement plans by weeks because its new aircraft was forced to fly around the area postponing their schedule .
There have been a large amount of complaints that the European Air Safety Council had acted without proper cause . The economic impact is yet to be total, but preliminary estimates are in the hundreds of billions (US$) when all affected businesses 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 industry is in the wake of a 33% downturn in the industry in 2009.
Many of these problems stem from a 30% downturn in orders from Europe in the wake of the Global Recession. Their lessening in orders is most straight off related to layoffs and hiring freezes in Europe, their main customers .
meantime, nations such as Columbia have been more than amenable to sell their flowers to Europe because of the decay of the US flower market adding even more pressure to Kenya’s flower market .
Also putting pressure on the international flower industry is an increasing amount of customers looking for discount flowers. Many of these buyers want top quality products for prices presently attached with cheap flowers.
Workers will largely bear the brunt of these downturns with large downsizing plotted for many of the huge flower growers, buyers, exporters, and related industries. Some of these businesses are also looking at merchandising cheap discount flowers to diversify their sales.
