Visiting Van der Plas HQ in The Netherlands

May this year started of with an absolute bang as we all headed on a very early flight to Amsterdam. The weather even played a part as the sun split the trees for our arrival. Fionnualla McCauley the Irish Rep for Van der Plas was on hand at our beck and call to drive us all over the place and wow did she have an amazing trip planned for us.

In this Blog post I am going to concentrate on Vander Plas as a wholesaler and how their Infinity Sytem of ordering flowers differs to most the the flower wholesalers available to us.

Janette, Fionnualla & Deirdre at the Van der Plas HQ

Heading into Van der Plas to see how our flower orders are processed

Heading into the offices we were greeted by Pascel and the rest of the sales team, they have Sales Reps in every country they sell flowers to, and that is a lot of countries and a lot of reps.

Firstry we went up to the Auction Rooms, this is where all the buyers start in the office around 6.15 am having already visited the auctions to check on the quality of the flowers.

Each buyer buys from the three large auctions in Holland, Rijnsburg, Aalsmeer & Westwood, with each buyer responsible for buying different varieties, usually 3 different varieties.

With Van der Plas Infinity System, until you order the flowers you want, they will not order them.

At this point in the day- approx 7.30 am, you can still order your flowers, with Van der Plas from Ireland you can order until 8am each morning for despatch that same day,

The buyers will continue to buy from either the growers or the auction that day until all the orders that have come in have been fulfilled.

It is good to note, Vanderplas do not carry stock and when we arrived back in the office later that day to return the car there was not a flower to be seen, everything was gone in the trucks for delivery.

Why do they put so much pressure on them selves you might ask, Turning the flowers as fast a possible will always ensure you have the freshest flowers possible.

Below is a video of the process from start to finish that we did when we were there, it is so interesting