THE HAGUE, the Netherlands — Beautiful orchids are blooming at any Home Depot or local florist right now, but the flowers look even better in the Netherlands.
Customers can buy flowers with fewer brown or shriveled petals, thanks to automation that saves producers money and helps quality standardization. Long famous for tulips, the Netherlands now is the largest orchid producer in the world, with advanced technology claimed to be unique – right now – to Dutch greenhouses.
Below are scenes from Ter Laak Orchids, a third-generation flower producer that’s among the world leaders in floral technology. The photos demonstrate how the Dutch employ automation to produce orchids. (Click on each photo.)
Success starts with research and design, allowing the Dutch to bring more than a thousand varieties of new flowers to auction annually. Ter Laak devotes a smaller second story to plant testing. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
Richard ter Laak leads the same company his grandfather started. But he doesn’t go at the business alone: Ter Laak partners with dozens of other potted plant companies for marketing and sales. Unlike the U.S., few Dutch buy flowers online. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
The company operates a small sales floor to better understand customer preferences and test new products. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
Orchids are arranged in plastic pots on large metal trays for easy mobility while they grow. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
Automation reduces the need for employees compared with a traditional greenhouse. Ter Laak employs 50 permanent workers and 100 seasonal workers. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
The United States has less demand for automation because labor is much cheaper than in the Netherlands, so companies won’t save as much by cutting the number of people involved in the growing process. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
Each plant has a QR code at the bottom of its plastic pot. Cameras scan plants multiple times as they mature, automatically checking for quality and growth so the plants come out looking more uniform than their U.S. counterparts. The QR codes also gather data on the employees who handle the orchids, adding worker productivity to the analytics managers can now study. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
Companies such as Ter Laak can automate the growth process when they sell one plant in a monoculture business. By contrast, most U.S. producers grow multiple varieties of plants, all with different size pots and growing cycles. Monoculture allows automation, but American growers would find the process more complicated and expensive with different plants. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
Employees interact with plants at just the beginning and end stages of the production process – potting and packaging – because machines can’t handle the roots involved at the start or the precision at the end. Richard ter Laak said Dutch employees do not want these routine roles, so he hires Eastern Europeans. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
Dutch growers strive for uniformity because of customer demand, a level of quality consciousness that most American customers don’t yet expect for their flowers. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
Experts say Ter Laak has some of the most advanced processes in the industry, leading to increased efficiency and more uniform flowers.
Ter Laak, founded in 1955, is opening its first international location in Guatemala at the end of this year.
Richard ter Laak said in a press presentation that his company picked that country, despite its small customer base, because orchids command prices three to four times higher in Guatemala than in developed markets.
In the U.S., orchids are the top-selling potted flower, rising ahead of the poinsettia in 2013, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The flower’s rise in popularity coincides with a precipitous drop in cost. Orchid prices decreased 30 percent between 2004 and 2013, which may lead growers to start looking across the Atlantic for more efficient processes.
Meghan Morris is reporting from the Netherlands as part of a Dutch embassy-sponsored trip for journalists.
Photo at top: Ter Laak Orchids sells test flower varieties in a showroom next to its production facility. The company, like many of its Dutch counterparts, relies on automation to a greater degree than U.S. flower growers. (Meghan Morris/Medill)
