2,500 tons of flowers are stranded due to lack of flights

The demand for flowers increased 30% compared to 2021, but logistical problems prevent part of that extra demand from being covered.

Between August and September 2021, the National Federation of Producers and Exporters of Flowers of Ecuador (Fedexpor) had already projected that the demand of the flower Ecuadorian would increase 30% in 2022.

This projection was fulfilled, but one of the biggest concerns of the sector also became a reality: the logistical problems have become one of the biggest obstacles to taking advantage of all the opportunities offered by the new season of Valentine’s Daywhich is the first big date of the year.

As a consequence of the pandemic, the sea route for shipments has been saturated since 2021. And the air route, which should be the natural outlet for all the emergencies in the export sector, has been increasingly overwhelmed by the growing demand.

Thus, at the moment there is a deficit of more than 8% of space for cargo to the United States; and 24% for Europe and Asian destinations.

This reality is causing around 2,500 tons of Ecuadorian flowers are stranded in airports such as Quito, and cannot be exported to the different markets that the national product has.

The logistical problems It does not seem that they can be solved in the short term, so if the dammed shipments cannot finally be removed, only a small percentage of those tons can be sold on the domestic market.

However, most will have to be discarded and composted to fertilize farmland.

In addition to the lack of space in the flights, another issue that also complicates the sector is the shortage of paper on a global scale. That shortage means there are fewer cartons for packaging. Also, as happens in other agricultural sectors, it has been facing an increase in the prices of the inputs necessary for production.

Recovery slows down

In 2020, with the first hit of the pandemic, production stopped around 17% of the hectares of flowers and 11,000 jobs were lost. However, at the end of that year, there was a bet on the reactivation of the United States, which in 2021 saw a recovery that allowed exports for $852 million.

Initially, it was projected to reach up to $900 million during the past year, but the logistical problems growth began to slow down. For this 2022, with the lack of space for air cargo, the expectation is to export, in the best of cases, $870 million.

We had projected a logistics deficit of 2,500 tons for Valentin; in video part of the consequences of what can be seen at UIO airport. The logistical problem today is lack of flights pic.twitter.com/PF5uoKYOdp

– Alejandro Martinez (@amartinezec) January 28, 2022