New Belgian handling
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FACED with rapidly growing competition from Dutch growers plant and flower producers in Belgium are now banking on a new, more cost-effective transport system to help balance the books.
Based mainly in the region around Ghent, the plant growers — usually small family concerns — are dependent for commercial success on exporting almost hall their total production, with France, Germany, Italy and Britain among the main markets. Originally plants and bulbs were collected in baskets, a method which delayed vehicles at each shipping point and which made transport costs unrealistically high.
A large international haulier, Damco-Pyck (a member of the Nedlloyd Group of companies), with years of experience in this type of traffic, undertook a marketing study and found that many Belgian exporters began to lose trade through not using the internationally-approved container method of shipping. To retain this valuable segment of export traffic Damco-Pyck accordingly decided to invest in a large number of specialist plant containers which are being made available to exporters at a weekly charge of B.Fr. 70 per container. Return traffic, and in particular fruit and cheese, can also be handled in a more rational fashion by using the lightweight containers.