News » 23.05.2025 - A look behind the scenes at a flower and plant auction
Along the motorway in Herongen, Germany, right on the Dutch border near Venlo, is a 220,000-square-meter site of enormous importance to the region. It is home to Veiling Rhein-Maas, the only flower and plant auction in Germany. Around 5 million transactions take place annually and last year it achieved a turnover of more than 420 million euros. If you want to see this unique business in action, you should get up early, as it is currently the peak season.
Customers are usually on site from 5am to inspect the offerings in person and judge the quality. From Monday to Friday, the auction starts at 6am. Only on weekends and less than half a dozen public holidays the auction remains closed. In April and May, there is so much supply that the auction starts as early as 5.30am. It always continues until all containers of cut flowers, potted plants and trees are sold, and that can take a long time! "Thanks to digitalisation, it is now also possible to buy flowers and plants from your armchair, but most customers still prefer to be present on site," Cees Hoekstra, managing director of Veiling Rhein-Maas, told visitors from the German-Dutch network of the Interreg project 'Agropole Innovates'. This is a German-Dutch project aimed at connecting and strengthening agribusiness in both countries.
The group of visitors in the green-clad foyer of Veiling Rhein-Maas
Mondays and Wednesdays are the busiest days. This is when there are considerably more products in the auction's spacious halls. Daily turnover is between 1 and 1.5 million euros and in the high season even between 2.5 and 4 million euros. Mondays and Wednesdays are the busiest days. This is when there are considerably more products in the auction's spacious halls. Daily turnover is between 1 and 1.5 million euros and in the high season even between 2.5 and 4 million euros.
The auction hall of Veiling Rhein-Maas accommodates several hundred customers. Eight clocks are auctioned simultaneously; the four clocks on the left are for cut flowers, the four clocks on the right for potted plants. "Based on what they are interested in, customers choose their place in the auction room," Hoekstra explains. "The order in which the different flowers and plants are auctioned is rarely changed. That way, customers can always estimate when and on which clock the goods will be auctioned that they want to bid on."
The supply at the auction is seasonal: around Valentine's Day, red roses are very popular, while around Easter many yellow flowers and plants are bought. It sometimes happens that no bid is placed and thus no buyer is found for the goods. "This fortunately happens rarely and depends on the quantity offered and the demand. Generally, these are very small quantities."
The logistics centre of Veiling Rhein-Maas is located directly behind the auction hall. From a platform, visitors can see what happens behind the scenes to deliver the goods to the highest bidder as quickly as possible. Here too, the separation of potted plants and cut flowers continues, which has to do not only with the goods being sold, but also with the different load carriers used to transport the goods. While plants are often sold by whole cart and transported through the halls via a 10-km-long chain conveyor, it is a bit more complicated with cut flowers on the other side of the hall. Cut flowers are often bought in small lots, which means that all the buckets of flowers for each customer have to be put together by hand by the auction staff.
"We currently have about 350 permanent employees in different departments. Unfortunately, we are also suffering from the shortage in the labour market, which is why we are looking at how we can optimise our processes even more to continue serving our customers in the future," Hoekstra says. "During the auction there is always a short break, partly to give customers a breather and partly to give the employees of Veiling Rhein-Maas a head start in assigning and distributing the load carriers to transport the auctioned flowers and plants to the customers as quickly as possible."
Veiling Rhein-Maas is the only flower and plant auction in Germany. There are similar auctions in the Netherlands, but they operate almost exclusively digitally. The possibility to inspect and bid on the goods yourself on site is no longer available in the Netherlands. The Herongen auction was created in 2010 from a joint venture of two Landgard auctions in Germany and the Royal Flora Holland auction in Venlo. The merger of the three auctions has led to even closer cross-border cooperation between the two neighbouring countries, something the Agropole Innovates team is keen to see.
A peek inside the auction room
After the visit to Veiling Rhein-Maas, the morning was not over yet. As a middleman, Schultz Blumenhandel und Logistik is the link between the auction and their customers, which include many garden centres. Senior manager Jürgen Schultz sits in the auction room himself every morning and tries to buy the goods ordered by their customers at the auction at the best price. The logistics department based at the auction ensures that the plants auctioned in the morning are already in the garden centres up to 100 km away by 2pm. This is a huge logistical effort, but it ensures that the quality of the flowers and plants that end up in those garden centres is very high. There are currently 17 trucks driving for Schultz, but there could certainly be 20. "It is very difficult to find drivers," says Jürgen Schultz. "And then they don't even have to drive long distances with us. All our drivers are back home by dinner time." Despite all the challenges, the flower and plant business remains the Schultz family's passion. The visitors present were able to see for themselves why: the floral splendour in the halls of Veiling Rhein-Maas and its affiliated companies puts a smile on your face every day.
Source: www.floraldaily.com
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