Different ways to pack your shipment of flowers and plants
How do we pack your flowers or plants?
To ship your flowers and/or plants we have several options we can offer you. Mainly these options come down to on a trolley or on a pallet. Which option is best for your situation depends mostly on wether we are shipping cutlowers , plants or a mix of both. In this blog we will highlight these options and give our recommendation.
Shipping on trolleys
Our general advice is to ship your goods on CC trolleys. These are te most versatile as we can adjust the height of each shelf to perfectly fit whatever we place on them. Aswell we can add extensions on top making the maximum height 2.6 mtr which fits neatly in any standard truck.
Trolleys are also more user friendly for you yourself as they have wheels, meaning you can easily move them into your store or warehouse without the need for a pallet truck.
Plants on trolleys
For plants the best way to pack them is on a CC trolley. Using shelves to maximize how many plants we can fit per trolley. For very tall plants we also have half-shelves giving us the option to use more of the available space when we cannot fill a trolley with tall plants. This way the price for transport will be most efficient.
Cutflowers on trolleys
When shipping cutflowers on trolleys we have several options as to how we place them on the shelves. The least cost effective way we can ship flowers is using the plastic containers they come in. This takes up alot of room but it has the added advantage of being shipped in water. This makes this options the best one to garantee the best quality. However these containers need to be returned to us adding more administration work on both sides aswell as you needing to pay a deposit on them when we ship them.
The most cost effective way is to take out all the flowers from their containers and lay them down stacked ontop of eachother. This however can lead to damaging the flowers and arriving in poor quality. If requested though we can certainly do this and when we do we place the most resilient flowers on the bottom.
The inbetween option is to place the flowers neatly in cardboard trays. These fit perfectly ontop of a trolley shelf. This surrounds the flowers on all sides with cardboard while stil having the top open leaving some room for airflow. Packing in this way minimizes the amount of possible damage to the flowers while still being very effecient in the amount of space we have available to us.
Other alternatives we have to us is using boxes from the auctionhouse (which need to be returned) and stack those ontop of 2 trolleys placed next to eachother or using other size boxes in a similar manner.
Naturally no two shipments are alike and some flowers are more important to you then others. To accomodate this we can use any combination of the above options as requested. For instance we will often pack most flowers that are not too delicate in cardboard trays while leaving the more delicate and/or expensive flowers in their plastic containers.
Mixed shipments on trolleys
With mixed shipments of cutflowers and plants we can use all the above mentioned options for flowers.
Depending on the distance from us to you (and as such how long it takes) we will either recommend mixing it together on a trolley, to be most efficient in space usage and thus being most cost effective, or to seperate plants and flowers so they can be kept inside trucks at different temperatures for longer trips for the best possible quality.
Shipping on pallets
We can also send your shipment on pallets. One benefit shipping on a pallet has over the use of trolleys s that these do not need to be returned to us. This saves on administraton work.
Shipping on a pallet however is far less versatile as we will always need to pack your goods , wether its flowers or plants , in boxes. We have a selecton of boxes available to us to use to optimize the space we have. But given the nature of these types of shipments we will offcourse have to stack these boxes ontop of eachother which makes these pallets alot less stable during transport then the trolleys (even when we seal them).
For smaller shipments of cutflowers using a pallet is a decent option in combination with boxes that fit neatly on them. This is very cost effecient.
Trolley or pallet: Our recommendation
Given the versatility and the overall cost effectiveness our recommendation is to use trolleys for all shipments. While this does add some administration to both sides, to keep track of the trolleys and containers used and returned, it is well worth it given how much versatility it provides in packing and securing the best possible quality. Offcourse this is all just our opinion and if you feel another way works better for your situation then we will gladly ship it to you as you request it.
