WELLINGTON - Another floriculture company is successfully turning a profit in the New Zealand off-season by growing in another country to keep up the global supply of cut flowers.
Tauranga-based Bloomz says its joint venture with a Kenyan flower producer, started five years ago, began to pay off last year when
the first Bloomz-branded, Kenyan-grown calla lilies landed in Japan.
Bloomz went into the joint venture partly to gain easier access to European markets: freight charges from Kenya are much cheaper and there are no entry tariffs into Europe from Kenya.
A local company run by cut-flower tycoon Monty Hollows has planted over a million nerine bulbs in China, in a joint venture with a New Zealand marketing company.
Mr Hollows plans to lift shipments of his "diamond lilies" from 1 million to 10 million stems a year to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. - NZPA
