Kuno Jacobs, organiser of Nova Exhibitions, is looking back on a successful Flowers Expo Ukraine, which took place in Kiev last week. “The general feeling is that the market has picked up after a few difficult years.”
“We’re looking back on another very successful trade fair”, said Kuno Jacobs. He is the owner of Nova Exhibitions, which organised the fair. With 8,970 visitors, attendance was around 24% higher than last year and according to Jacobs, exhibitors were very happy about the number and the quality of visitors.
“The general feeling is that the market has picked up after a few difficult years.” This was also confirmed by the strong increase of Ukrainian companies attending the fair”, said Jacobs.
Jacobs’ findings are in line with the experiences that Floribusiness heard from many exhibitors. There seemed to be a cautious optimism among plant and flower traders.
A total of more than 100 companies, from nine different countries, took part in the fair. Jacobs expects this number to increase further in the coming year.
Rose is most important
Rose is the most important product in Ukraine. It is estimated that 50% of all the flowers sold in Ukraine are rose. 85% of this is grown by local companies. The largest of these is Ascania Flora, which consists of 22 ha.
Flower arranger Polina Shkolnykov, who was working at Flower Expo Ukraine, said she really enjoys working with other flowers than rose. Florists would also like to sell other flowers. “But consumers only want to buy rose”, she said tellingly. Rose is followed by chrysanthemum; not something that’s grown an awful lot locally. They import from the Netherlands. Carnation is number 3 on the list.
And there were other flowers too on Flower Expo Ukraine, such as anemone, ranunculus, lisianthus and zantedeschia. The Ukrainians refer to these flowers as ‘exotics’.
Export company Astra Fund Holland is trying to differentiate with these exoctics. Apart from ranunculus, Aristov also mentioned allium and gloriosa. “We also export potted plants, which the Ukrainians can’t get anywhere else.”
Limflor’s main trade is chrysanthemum, but they also see that exotics like ranunculus and anemone are becoming more important. Andrey Shymkov indicated that the import company Ukraflora doesn’t sell too many exotics, but he does see a small top layer of people who can afford vanda for example.
Ukraine is also very much a tulip country, explained Arno Klijbroek of Stokolex, which exports tulip bulbs to Ukraine, among other places. He noticed that demand is slowly increasing. Customers are investing in small greenhouses. “Customers have been ordering larger quantities every year, mostly because we’re taking over market share from other suppliers.”
The trade fair, which took place from 17 to 19 April in the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev, was held for the 12th time this year. Since 2006, the fair has been organised in collaboration with the Flower Council of Ukraine.
