Aalsmeer Flower Auctions

  Aalsmeer, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

This afternoon was the world's biggest flower auctions at Aalsmeer. Every morning from 4am, growers bring their flowers to the auction and within a few hours, the auctioning begins. By any account, this place is massive. Every single day, 25 million flowers are sold at this auction. Next year, when this auction merges with the one in Rotterdam, 45 million flowers will be sold daily here.

These stats were courtesy of the Mayor of Aalsmeer himself, Burgemeester (and District Governor Nominee) Joost Hoffscholte. He is without doubt the most talkative person we have met in Holland so far (and in Australia, for that matter) and provided us with a huge amount of information regarding the city of Aalsmeer and the flower auctions.
10,000 people work on the Flower Auction premises which has an area of 700,000 square metres. It is not only the largest flower auction in the world, but also the largest commercial building in the world. The facts and figures spat at us like tropical mosquitoes. It was an enormous amount of information to digest. 80% of the flowers come from Holland. 80% of the flowers are then exported to every corner of the globe, Australia included.

What else could we expect but such statistics from a man who has been mayor of Aalsmeer for 30 years? Joost explained that in Holland, being mayor is a profession, not an elected position; very different to Australia. Unfortunately at the end of the day we didn't make it back to the Aalsmeer market in time for the fresh Stroopwafels (our favourite) on offer. Instead we had to make do with trying on the mayoral chains for size. I guess we'll have to wait until next time we're in town.