Top Chinese auction centre wants more Thai orchids
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THE LARGEST flower-auction centre in China looks forward to bringing in more flowers from Thailand, particularly orchids, to meet increasing demand.
Dong Wenyi, executive manager of Kunming International Flower Auction Trading Centre (KIFA), which has been in business for about 14 years, said it auctioned a variety of flowers from Thailand including orchids but the volume was still small.
“I wish to say that we would like to welcome more flowers from Thailand, especially orchids. It is because our customers have been interested in this kind of flower,” he told The Nation.
He was speaking at a briefing for a group of Southeast and South Asian journalists invited to Kunming, China, by Yunnan Daily Press Group recently.
He said his auction centre was also interested in having chrysanthemums from Malaysia available for his customers.
The centre, a subsidiary of Yunnan Jinyuan Flower Industry Company, is the largest flower-auction market in China, second in Asia only to Tokyo’s Ota Market, and fourth in the world.
Dong said the auctioneers were provided with nine electronic trading clocks and 900 seats to conduct daily trading totalling about 8 million to 10 million deals. The trading volume in peak days exceeds 5 million branches, with about 2 million to 3 million branches on daily basis. A bunch of flowers contains 100 branches.
Dong said the daily trading started at 7pm and the whole process would be complete by 4am when the sold flowers were shipped from the warehouse. The centre trades more than a hundred varieties of flowers including rose, African daisy, baby’s breath, flame-ray gerbera and carnation.
The company has more than 25,000 suppliers and more than 3,100 buyers across China. Last year, it sold 750 million branches of fresh cut flowers and the total trading value was 550 million yuan (Bt3 billion).
World standards
Dong said the flowers from the centre were of good quality and freshly cut, as the company has a good quality-control system to make sure the flowers from its suppliers meet international standards.
The centre has a quality-control team and a laboratory to ensure the best quality of flowers for its customers.
It enforces a number of standards including procedures for post-harvest handling of fresh-cut flowers.
It has set up a pricing centre for the whole of China as well as a flower service centre based on a product chain in which flower growers’ cooperative economic organisations serve as the basic suppliers.
Dong said the company provided a modern “open, just and fair” trading platform for flower growers and businesses under the concept of “high sales and good prices for fine flowers”.
“With the implementation of the brand strategy, we have built more than 50 famous brands of Yunnan flowers such as Jinyuan Flower, Shan Mea Jie, Ziqiu Rose and Yalian Baby’s Breath.”
KIFA has been developing service support systems including e-commerce and remote trading. Within 10 years, Dong said, KIFA hopes to be the Asian platform for first-class flower trading, purchaser service and information service.
