It is the world's largest! Millions of flowers and plants are bought and sold here each business day. Although the majority of them come from local producers, many are flown in from other countries. Once they go through the auction, they are loaded onto airplanes for the trip to the U.S. and other countries to be sold that day from your local florist shop.
The auction house is huge, about the size of nine football fields under one roof. The carts of plant material are hooked together and pulled through the auction area, where it is displayed to the bidders one cart at a time. We could look down from the visitors' gallery, which is 6 metres above the working floor, and see the hustle and bustle going on below us! There are audio boxes that provide extra information. You can also look into the auction rooms where the biddings take place.
Some Interesting facts:
An average of 19 million flowers and 2 million plants change hands every day within a surface area of 1 million square meters. These are supplied by around 7000 growers worldwide, and bought by 1375 wholesalers and exporters. Within a couple of hours, they are exported to almost every country in the world. Aalsmeer Flower Auction’s market share is 44%.
Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer is a growers’ cooperative. Around 3300 growers are members of the cooperative society and thus joint owners of the auction building. As members, they are obliged to sell their entire product via the auction. The grower contributes a percentage of his sales profit for the use of the building and staff costs; this is known as the commission. This percentage is set in the general meeting. Buyers are not members, but are registered as buyers in the computerised administration system.
With its 999,000 square meters of floor space (soon to be more than 1 million), the auction building is the largest commercial building in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
Bloemenveiling Aalsmeer turns over EUR 6 million every day.