Aalsmeer is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands and the home to the largest flower auction in the world. Aalsmeer Flower Auction, with its 990,000 m2 of floor space is the world’s third largest building. Approximately 20 million flowers are sold in this building every auction day.
The countries where the majority of the flowers and plants come from are The Netherlands, Kenya, Israel, Ethiopia, Ecuador and Germany. The majority of export countries for FloraHolland are Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy and Belgium. (The USA came in at #14)
Since January 1, 2008 the Aalsmeer flower auction has merged with the united auctions of Naaldwijk and Rijnsburg under the name FloraHolland. FloraHolland has 5,200 members, 9,000 suppliers, 3,500 customers and employs 4,500 people. The Dutch floricultural business creates, directly or indirectly, 250,000 full time jobs for people worldwide. The network has a combined turnover of flowers & plants of more than 4 billion euros.
In 2008 the top 10 flowers sold were: 1) Roses 2) Mums 3) Tulips 4) Lilies 5) Gerbers 6) Cymbidium Orchids 7) Freesia 8 ) Anthurium 9) Amaryllis 10) Alstroemeria
In case you are wondering – Yes, you can visit the auction house!! It’s open to the public Monday thru Friday, 7:30-11am.
For more information be sure to visit FloraHolland Website
Information from this post was gathered from:
FloraHolland
Wikipedia
This place is staggering! I’ve visited it before and it is mind blowing how many flowers come through here every day. I always encourage floral professionals to visit The Netherlands with it’s rich floral culture from Aalsmeer to Keukenhof to nearly every shop window. I even saw banks with floral displays in their windows!