Standardise And Collaborate

The second edition of Flower logistics Africa and the maiden edition of Perishable logistics Africa, held recently at the Kenyan capital city, brought Africa's key exporters to discuss the role of logistics in finding the right market and price for one of Africa's key exports. The deliberations at the two events called for stricter standardisation across the logistics value chain and greater collaboration within the industry.

- Renjini Liza Varghese

Kenya is one of the key exporters of flower and perishables in the world. While the country exports over 200,000 tonnes of flowers per annum to 60 international destinations, perishables also command a similar market share. For the last two years flower and perishable export growth has been hit owing to different factors.

The flower segment, according to Kenya Flower Council (KFC), however is growing at 2 percent, which KFC thinks will improve soon.

While Europe continues to be the key market, Kenyan growers are looking beyond Europe as the demand started surging from the East. So it is a ‘look East’ policy adopted by the Kenyan growers especially with increasing demand from China. The changing paradigms like the entry of e-commerce players are expected to drive the flower and perishable markets in the coming years.

The flower and perishable segments face challenges that include, lack of standardisation in packaging, the high cost of transportation, non-collaboration among the stake holders and how to maintain the right temperature etc.

Jane Ngige, chief executive officer of KFC pointed out, “Farmers are no longer farmers; they have grown to become global business people. So they got to face global business challenges, which will include logistics, investments and so on and so forth. They no longer can sit back and grow flowers or perishables and deliver it to the airports.”