Swissport International has expanded its ‘Flower Corridor’ to key European air cargo destinations ahead of Valentine’s Day on 14 February. It gives a fully temperature-controlled, end-to-end process for the transport of fresh flowers from Kenya to Europe, extending shelf life by up to a week.
This Valentine’s season, Swissport expects to handle more than 250 million flowers at its air cargo center in Nairobi, Kenya, one of the key origins for fresh flowers . Flowers move from Kenyan farms via Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta Airport (NBO) to global destinations on 35 additional freighter flights.
Swissport is s investing in capacity and technology to handle perishable and sensitive freight within a pre-defined temperature range, which must be maintained throughout the entire ground handling process: from the arrival of from farms, through the high-speed vacuum cooling process during acceptance, to the loading of pallets onto the aircraft. This ‘Flower Corridor’ which Swissport first rolled out in Kenya two years ago, has now also been implemented at key European air cargo destinations in Amsterdam and Liège.
Qatar Airways Cargo meanwhile has transported 2,800 tonnes of flowers, the equivalent of 42 million fresh-cut red roses from Kenya and South America in time for Valentine’s Day. From Nairobi, the carrier transported almost 1,600 tonnes on its scheduled flights and charters and from Bogota and Quito, it carried close to 1,200 tonnes to key markets including Amsterdam, Middle East, Asia and Australia.
It operated nine additional Boeing 777 charters from Nairobi and ten from Quito in the fortnight leading up to Valentine’s Day, in addition to its regular scheduled flights.
Miami International Airport said meanwhile that it was expecting to handle 1,500 tons of cut flowers daily between January 1 and the end of February – a 3% increase over the airport’s record-breaking peak season in 2024. America’s largest gateway for flowers, which handles 91% of all imports by air to the US, expects to receive 90,154 tons of cut flowers valued at more than $400 million during this year’s Valentine’s Day rush.
Flowers continue to be MIA’s largest imported product by weight, accounting for almost 360,000 tons annually worth $1.65 billion. It has the nation’s most extensive air route network with Colombia and Ecuador, the two top flower-producing countries in the region