Willum van den Hoogen is managing director at Florius, which sells Veronica and Hypericum from Ethiopia and Kenya. Van den Hoogen feels that from an ecological, social and economic point of view, it’s unacceptable that some of the big airlines on the route Nairobi Amsterdam have to make a bureaucratic stopover in Jeddah or London.
Florius ships large volumes from Kenya to the Netherlands by airfreight. When Van den Hoogen was involved in airfreight negotiations with partner Kuehne + Nagel, he learned a lot about the air cargo transport of Kenyan flowers. There were a number of aspects that really shocked him.
“The majority of the flowers, vegetables and herbs that’s shipped from Kenya to the Netherlands, makes a detour and an extra landing in the Middle East and/or at a different European destination, for bureaucratic reasons. Saudia, Qatar and Turkish Airlines, and since recently, Etihad as well, fly via London and Abu Dhabi to Amsterdam, according to Van den Hoogen.
He reckons that at least 15 of the cargo flights that fly from Nairobi to Amsterdam every week, make a detour. “That equals to 75,000 tons of airfreight per year and if nobody does anything about it, that’s just going to get worse. Emirates, Cargolux and Singapore Airlines are still flying directly, but it could very well be that they’re also going to be forced to fly indirectly. The only Dutch carrier still active on this route is KLM/Martinair. But they’ve only got a limited number of aircrafts. They currently operate five flights per week and pick up other fresh produce in Johannesburg and Harare before they land in Nairobi.”
From an ecological, social and economic point of view, Van den Hoogen feels it’s unacceptable that some of the big airlines on that route, like Saudia (9x per week, B747) and Etihad (5x per week, B777) have to make a bureaucratic stopover in Jeddah or London. As he points out, it’s during takeoff and landing when most kerosene is used and emissions peak. Furthermore, flowers are made unnecessarily expensive for the European consumer and the products are less fresh, because they warm up during the long flight.
Van den Hoogen: “It’s bad for the flowers, the consumers, the position of Kenyan growers on the European market, as well as for the environment. Not to mention the prospect of reduced landing rights at Schiphol and potentially stricter rules for other carriers. All of this combined doesn’t look positive for the Dutch hub.”
Van den Hoogen said that Florius ended up choosing direct flights of Cargolux and KLM/Martinair, from an ecological and cold chain perspective. “But not everyone has that option, space is limited. It would be better for Kenya if everyone used a direct connection.”
