The world of tomorrow is today for hydroponically grown tulips
The world of tomorrow is today for hydroponically grown tulips
In the 1970s, when (as today) parenthood meant a trip to Walt Disney World, the theme park's Future World exhibit in Epcot Center featured plants growing without soil, their roots dangling in water. Plants of the future, tourists were told, would grow only in water. This new growing method was called hydroponics, from the Greek words for water and labor.
Now, more than three decades later, tomorrow is here for tulips. Next year, a massive new tulip farm in rural Virginia will produce more than 24 million tulips by May 31. They will all be grown hydroponically -- in water, without soil, fertilizer or chemicals. But the real surprise is that more than 12 million of them are already sold.
The Dutch tulip farm in Stevensburg, VA, is a state-of-the- art facility that opened this year as a joint venture between Duamex, a major flower broker with headquarters in Miami, and Fresh Tulips USA LLC, the grower.
Henri J. van der Borg, the owner and chief executive officer of Duamex LLC, said that Dutch tulip quality would be the standard for the flowers grown in Virginia.
"Our logo will be the Statue of Liberty holding a tulip," he said. "That stands for Dutch quality grown in America." Duamex is the first importer to join hands with an American grower in opening a hydroponics growing facility in the United States. "It's like Honda opening a factory to make Japanese cars in Ohio," Mr. van der Borg said.
The Fresh Tulips USA greenhouse, about 60 miles west of Washington, claims to be the first totally hydroponic tulip facility. It has special lighting and cabriolet design so that the glass roof can be opened to take advantage of good growing weather. Mr. van der Borg said that the location was chosen because an existing facility was available, because of the intensity of the sunlight and growing conditions there, and because it is centrally located between Duamex centers in Miami, Chicago and New Jersey.
Another advantage of the location is its proximity to the largest consumer market in the United States. From Stevensburg, this market can be reached by refrigerated tractor-trailer within 16 hours door-to-door without temperature changes, airline transfers or USDA inspections. The growing season in Stevensburg lasts 36 weeks, October through early June, pausing only during the summer months when temperatures are too hot. During those months, demand is filled with Chilean bulbs grown by the Mother Company of Fresh Tulips in Colombia. This allows fresh tulip production 52 weeks a year from bulbs harvested in Holland, France and Chile thanks to the variation in seasons each location offers.
The hydroponic forcing facility in Virginia debuted last spring and produced some 6 million tulips in its first harvest from January through May. Duamex has an exclusive contract with Fresh Tulips USA to receive 100 percent of its crop.
"We can grow tulips to order at this new facility," Mr. van der Borg said. "The Dutch bulbs are stored in special coolers imported from the Netherlands. They are allowed to develop three- to four-inch sprouts, then brought out into water trays in the greenhouse, where temperature and light intensity are controlled. In January, it takes 21 days for a tulip to bloom; by the end of May, growing time is nine days."
To keep the flowers fresh, the bulb is left on the stem until just before shipping. "We can cut tulips in Stevensburg on Monday and have them in a store in Pittsburgh by Wednesday morning," he said. "If they were shipped from Holland, they could take up to five days to get to the store, and that means they would have spent half of their total life in transit."
Because of the reduced shipping time, the U.S. tulips do not require the hormones normally added to flowers shipped from the Netherlands, Mr. van der Borg said. The Fresh Tulips USA blossoms come packed upright in cardboard hampers that can be recycled. The hampers are coated on the inside so they can hold water for 10 days, and the tops can be detached for store displays. Soaring energy costs give another advantage to American-grown tulips, Mr. van der Borg added. "Imported tulips now cost 20 percent more than they did a year ago due to increased fuel surcharges for transportation and exchange rate variables between the euro and the dollar."
Duamex, which stands for Dutch-American Export Co., was formed in Connecticut in 1988 as a wholesaler and importer of flowers from the Netherlands. It did less than $1 million in sales that first year. For 2005, sales will top $30 million, and Duamex alone will buy about 10 percent of all the flowers imported from Holland.
The firm specializes in bulb flowers like lilies and tulips as well as off-season flowers from Central America and South America. It buys from growers in Hawaii and a score of countries, including Australia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, South Africa and Thailand. In the United States, Duamex was the first to offer lilies grown in Costa Rica, and flowers from Dutch bulbs grown in Brazil and Chile.
Mr. van der Borg, 46, was born in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, where his grandfather had started a retail clothing business in 1935. His parents took over the store, and Mr. van der Borg worked there part-time before he decided to put his studies in economics and marketing to use in the United States. His fluency in English earned him a ticket to the United States in 1982 through a student organization in the Netherlands.
Soon Mr. van der Borg found himself selling cut flowers in Minneapolis. He was a novice at the trade but rode a boom in the popularity of Dutch flowers. He became the top salesman for cut flowers at his firm.
Mr. van der Borg went back to the Netherlands, where he worked for S. Zurel and Co., at that time the largest exporter-flower handler in the world. In Aalsmeer, he was in the thick of the Holland flower industry and at the heart of the largest flower auction in the world.
But his heart was not in Aalsmeer, it turned out, nor had he left it in San Francisco. It was with a girl named Carol in Chicago. After eight months he returned to the United States, married the girl, rented a house on Long Island, and in 1984 started a new business, Zurel USA Inc., for Zurel in the Netherlands. The firm's headquarters were in the basement and Mrs. van der Borg was the secretary. Soon he expanded the business to four locations.
In 1988, Mr. van der Borg joined Duamex, which had been started by another Dutch exporter, Gino Hol, and Tom Wirth, at that time running Nyren Bros., a wholesale company in Connecticut. With the support of his partners, the business grew to its present size. Along the way, Mr. van der Borg bought his partners out.
Duamex now has 45 employees at its headquarters in Miami and 20 in Chicago and New Jersey. Fresh Tulips USA has four Dutch supervisors and about 50 seasonal employees. The firm hopes to convert to year-round workers in the next year or so.
Mr. Van der Borg and his wife have a 19-year-old son, Robert, a student at Florida International University who works in the freight department at Duamex, and a daughter, Jaclyn, 17, a student at Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
Mr. van der Borg is up at 4:30 a.m. every weekday with his first call to the Netherlands, where it is mid-morning already. Over the years, he has trained himself to get by with four or five hours of sleep. On Sundays, he sleeps in until 6 a.m., then takes son Robert in his flat-bottomed bass boat for a ride through the rivers of grass and canals of the Everglades only four miles from their home. "An hour in the natural beauty of the Everglades is like two hours in a cathedral," he said.
His mother in the Netherlands is a scout of sorts for her son. Every Sunday, Mr. van der Borg calls her; the first item of business is the weather report and what that means for the flower crop.
A student of history, Mr. van der Borg knows the saga of the tulip, which began in Turkey and first bloomed in western Europe in 1559. By the end of the 16th century, Turkey had become an important trading partner for the Low Countries. Amsterdam and Antwerp in what is present-day Belgium soon bested the Italian merchants of Genoa and Venice, which until then had a monopoly on trade with the Near East.
The Turkish culture made a deep impression on Dutch merchants. Tulip mania held sway in Holland from 1634 to 1637, when prices for rare bulbs skyrocketed and fortunes were made overnight. One single tulip bulb could buy a furnished canal house in Amsterdam, and the most expensive bulb sold in 1637 was worth $1.35 million in today's dollars.
Today, those overnight fortunes in tulip bulbs are a dream. Patience is a necessity in a business where it takes a quarter-century to go from a tulip seed to a bulb to commercial production. Mr. van der Borg selects tulips for their color, shape, ability to multiply and how they hold up against the tribulations of shipping. Five times a week, Duamex ships a trailer-truckload of tulips. In 2006, those 24 million tulips will require a few more trucks. Walt Disney, it seems, was right.
(For more on the floral industry, see the Dec. 5 issue of The Produce News.)
Now, more than three decades later, tomorrow is here for tulips. Next year, a massive new tulip farm in rural Virginia will produce more than 24 million tulips by May 31. They will all be grown hydroponically -- in water, without soil, fertilizer or chemicals. But the real surprise is that more than 12 million of them are already sold.
The Dutch tulip farm in Stevensburg, VA, is a state-of-the- art facility that opened this year as a joint venture between Duamex, a major flower broker with headquarters in Miami, and Fresh Tulips USA LLC, the grower.
Henri J. van der Borg, the owner and chief executive officer of Duamex LLC, said that Dutch tulip quality would be the standard for the flowers grown in Virginia.
"Our logo will be the Statue of Liberty holding a tulip," he said. "That stands for Dutch quality grown in America." Duamex is the first importer to join hands with an American grower in opening a hydroponics growing facility in the United States. "It's like Honda opening a factory to make Japanese cars in Ohio," Mr. van der Borg said.
The Fresh Tulips USA greenhouse, about 60 miles west of Washington, claims to be the first totally hydroponic tulip facility. It has special lighting and cabriolet design so that the glass roof can be opened to take advantage of good growing weather. Mr. van der Borg said that the location was chosen because an existing facility was available, because of the intensity of the sunlight and growing conditions there, and because it is centrally located between Duamex centers in Miami, Chicago and New Jersey.
Another advantage of the location is its proximity to the largest consumer market in the United States. From Stevensburg, this market can be reached by refrigerated tractor-trailer within 16 hours door-to-door without temperature changes, airline transfers or USDA inspections. The growing season in Stevensburg lasts 36 weeks, October through early June, pausing only during the summer months when temperatures are too hot. During those months, demand is filled with Chilean bulbs grown by the Mother Company of Fresh Tulips in Colombia. This allows fresh tulip production 52 weeks a year from bulbs harvested in Holland, France and Chile thanks to the variation in seasons each location offers.
The hydroponic forcing facility in Virginia debuted last spring and produced some 6 million tulips in its first harvest from January through May. Duamex has an exclusive contract with Fresh Tulips USA to receive 100 percent of its crop.
"We can grow tulips to order at this new facility," Mr. van der Borg said. "The Dutch bulbs are stored in special coolers imported from the Netherlands. They are allowed to develop three- to four-inch sprouts, then brought out into water trays in the greenhouse, where temperature and light intensity are controlled. In January, it takes 21 days for a tulip to bloom; by the end of May, growing time is nine days."
To keep the flowers fresh, the bulb is left on the stem until just before shipping. "We can cut tulips in Stevensburg on Monday and have them in a store in Pittsburgh by Wednesday morning," he said. "If they were shipped from Holland, they could take up to five days to get to the store, and that means they would have spent half of their total life in transit."
Because of the reduced shipping time, the U.S. tulips do not require the hormones normally added to flowers shipped from the Netherlands, Mr. van der Borg said. The Fresh Tulips USA blossoms come packed upright in cardboard hampers that can be recycled. The hampers are coated on the inside so they can hold water for 10 days, and the tops can be detached for store displays. Soaring energy costs give another advantage to American-grown tulips, Mr. van der Borg added. "Imported tulips now cost 20 percent more than they did a year ago due to increased fuel surcharges for transportation and exchange rate variables between the euro and the dollar."
Duamex, which stands for Dutch-American Export Co., was formed in Connecticut in 1988 as a wholesaler and importer of flowers from the Netherlands. It did less than $1 million in sales that first year. For 2005, sales will top $30 million, and Duamex alone will buy about 10 percent of all the flowers imported from Holland.
The firm specializes in bulb flowers like lilies and tulips as well as off-season flowers from Central America and South America. It buys from growers in Hawaii and a score of countries, including Australia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, South Africa and Thailand. In the United States, Duamex was the first to offer lilies grown in Costa Rica, and flowers from Dutch bulbs grown in Brazil and Chile.
Mr. van der Borg, 46, was born in Apeldoorn in the Netherlands, where his grandfather had started a retail clothing business in 1935. His parents took over the store, and Mr. van der Borg worked there part-time before he decided to put his studies in economics and marketing to use in the United States. His fluency in English earned him a ticket to the United States in 1982 through a student organization in the Netherlands.
Soon Mr. van der Borg found himself selling cut flowers in Minneapolis. He was a novice at the trade but rode a boom in the popularity of Dutch flowers. He became the top salesman for cut flowers at his firm.
Mr. van der Borg went back to the Netherlands, where he worked for S. Zurel and Co., at that time the largest exporter-flower handler in the world. In Aalsmeer, he was in the thick of the Holland flower industry and at the heart of the largest flower auction in the world.
But his heart was not in Aalsmeer, it turned out, nor had he left it in San Francisco. It was with a girl named Carol in Chicago. After eight months he returned to the United States, married the girl, rented a house on Long Island, and in 1984 started a new business, Zurel USA Inc., for Zurel in the Netherlands. The firm's headquarters were in the basement and Mrs. van der Borg was the secretary. Soon he expanded the business to four locations.
In 1988, Mr. van der Borg joined Duamex, which had been started by another Dutch exporter, Gino Hol, and Tom Wirth, at that time running Nyren Bros., a wholesale company in Connecticut. With the support of his partners, the business grew to its present size. Along the way, Mr. van der Borg bought his partners out.
Duamex now has 45 employees at its headquarters in Miami and 20 in Chicago and New Jersey. Fresh Tulips USA has four Dutch supervisors and about 50 seasonal employees. The firm hopes to convert to year-round workers in the next year or so.
Mr. Van der Borg and his wife have a 19-year-old son, Robert, a student at Florida International University who works in the freight department at Duamex, and a daughter, Jaclyn, 17, a student at Broward Community College in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
Mr. van der Borg is up at 4:30 a.m. every weekday with his first call to the Netherlands, where it is mid-morning already. Over the years, he has trained himself to get by with four or five hours of sleep. On Sundays, he sleeps in until 6 a.m., then takes son Robert in his flat-bottomed bass boat for a ride through the rivers of grass and canals of the Everglades only four miles from their home. "An hour in the natural beauty of the Everglades is like two hours in a cathedral," he said.
His mother in the Netherlands is a scout of sorts for her son. Every Sunday, Mr. van der Borg calls her; the first item of business is the weather report and what that means for the flower crop.
A student of history, Mr. van der Borg knows the saga of the tulip, which began in Turkey and first bloomed in western Europe in 1559. By the end of the 16th century, Turkey had become an important trading partner for the Low Countries. Amsterdam and Antwerp in what is present-day Belgium soon bested the Italian merchants of Genoa and Venice, which until then had a monopoly on trade with the Near East.
The Turkish culture made a deep impression on Dutch merchants. Tulip mania held sway in Holland from 1634 to 1637, when prices for rare bulbs skyrocketed and fortunes were made overnight. One single tulip bulb could buy a furnished canal house in Amsterdam, and the most expensive bulb sold in 1637 was worth $1.35 million in today's dollars.
Today, those overnight fortunes in tulip bulbs are a dream. Patience is a necessity in a business where it takes a quarter-century to go from a tulip seed to a bulb to commercial production. Mr. van der Borg selects tulips for their color, shape, ability to multiply and how they hold up against the tribulations of shipping. Five times a week, Duamex ships a trailer-truckload of tulips. In 2006, those 24 million tulips will require a few more trucks. Walt Disney, it seems, was right.
(For more on the floral industry, see the Dec. 5 issue of The Produce News.)
