Deal with a holiday like Saint Valentine´s Day

The tradition of giving flowers for St Valentine´s day in the US is a blessing for Colombian and Ecuadorian flower growers- but it implies a sizable logistic challenge. At GHT we must coordinate the delivery of millions of bunches and flower arrangements from Bogotá, Rionegro and Quito to the airports of Miami and Los Angeles, and to the seaport in San Diego, in California.

It has to do with matching the orders placed by the customers using advanced technological tools with the inventories some 50 farms have available in the Sabana de Bogotá, the eastern area of Antioquia and Ecuador; to locate, among the 40 types of flowers and 500 varieties produced, the ones that correspond to each order, and move those millions of cut flowers – that fill hundreds of thousands of boxes- in more than one hundred planes…in only three weeks!

Care must also be taken for the flower to be remain between 1 and 3 centigrades most of the time so they can be shipped under the best conditions; to monitor the trucks during their route and make sure that the flowers are delivered in time to the airports; to make the best use of the space available in the planes; and what is most important: for the flowers to arrive in time to their destination and can have a long vase life.

There is no doubt: It is an enormous challenge, but it´s fascinating!