‘Expanding is still part of our strategy. In the meantime, we will maintain Europe as much as possible. We are not saying we are moving away from Europa. But the extra volume in our expansion have to be ferried elsewhere”, explains CEO Clement Tulezi. Opening up new markets is one of the main ambitions of Kenya Flower Council (KFC).
One of the ambitons of Kenya Flower Council is to expand the market for Kenyan flowers and to find new markets. Did you succeed?
“We have succeeded to some extent. When you look at opening up a market, it is not an easy thing, because it involves not just issues of perception, but also of image, believability and trust. It also involves logistics. If you look at the American market for example. When we started doing some promotion there, which is about one year and of few months ago, we were basically at a market share of 1%. The measure that we had last year, is that we moved from 1% market share to 2%. It looks very small, but for us it is significant. Because if you look at the volumes that the American market consumes, a 1% movement is big for us. It shows that with vigorous promotion and target marketing, we can expand our market share.
In the interview Clement Tuelzi also shares the Kenyan experiences with corona virus.
“We are experiencing a very big hurdle with the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We are experiencing cancellations of flights to and from Nairobi. Exporters are left with produce that had been packaged and only awaiting loading onto cargo planes. We are loosing thousands of Euros every day. Moreover, we are already running short of inputs from foreign suppliers. And flowers are not a priority at the moment to end consumers. People are concerned about health.”
Click here to read the full interview with Clement Tulezi in Floribusiness magazine.
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