Largest flower forwarder at Schiphol Airport expects even more growth

The numbers are impressive: so many thousand square metres, so many million kilograms. IP Handlers, the largest forwarder of flowers, plants, propagation material, fruit and vegetables at Schiphol Airport, is working hard, and manager Mark Loos isn’t one to sit still either. This year, he expects the amount of transit goods to continue growing.

IP Handler mostly does flowers and plants, according to Mark, and fruit and vegetables come second. They recently invested considerably in refrigeration. “We already had about 6,500 m2 of cold store, but we recently expanded with another 3,500 m2, so we now have more than 10,000 m2 of cold store. Besides, we’ve expanded with a new, fourth, vacuum refrigerator, and we also made sure there were additional power supplies, so that all refrigerators and machines can actually operate at the same time. Our transit capacity has now expanded so much, more than 40,000 kilograms of flowers can be cooled to their desired temperature per hour.”

“Last year, we transported more than 75 million kilograms of flowers in transit through our facilities. The busiest day might be Saint Valentine’s Day: last year we handled more than 7.5 million kilograms of flowers for Valentine’s, and this year, that amount increased by 25 per cent, to more than 10 million kilograms.”

The remainder of the kilograms aren’t distributed over the year equally. “We have a few other peak days, such as the first day of school in Eastern Europe, Easter, Christmas, etc. Perhaps the very busiest day of the year is 8 March, International Women’s Day. Last year we had to rent a vacuum cooler and an additional 8,000 m2 of cold store.”

For more information:
IPHandlers BV
Mark Loos
Noordpolderweg 20
1432 JH Aalsmeer, the Netherlands
T: +31 297 747 200
E: mloos@iphandlers.nl
www.iphandlers.nl