Valentine’s day, popularly known to many as they day for expressing and sharing love globally is dated for 14th February every year and for this year, Emirates group’s cargo division, Emirates skycargo will be spreading love and supporting livelihoods.
Over the years, millions of roses are flown worldwide for Valentine’s Day resulting demand for flowers starting February each year. Some of the biggest flower exporting nations include Kenya and Ecuador who harvest and air –freight additional quantities of roses to important global centres of flower distribution such as Aalsmeer market in the Netherlands and also to customers around the world.
This year, Emirates skycargo will be transporting millions of flowers across the globe operating a total of nine freighter dedicated flowers over and above scheduled operations using the Boeing 777 freighter aircraft which is capable of transporting upto 100 tonnes of cargo, this translates into the carrier flying close to 900 tonnes of roses over and above the around 4000 tonnes transported monthly.
Keeping flowers fresh
The journey of flower exports begins on a farm where they are harvested by hand. The freshly harvested flowers are then sorted, arranged in bouquets and hand packed into boxes, which are then loaded on the aircraft. In order to ensure maximum freshness and shelf life, the flowers are maintained between 2 and 5 degrees centigrade.
Emirates skycargo has designed a specialised three-tiered portfolio of solutions – Emirates Fresh, Emirates Fresh Active and Emirates Fresh Breathe – for air-freighting different kinds of perishable cargo including food items and flowers. Emirates Fresh Breathe provides ventilated cool chain solutions for fresh cut flowers.
Supporting livelihoods
Over 100,000 people in Ecuador and an estimated 500,000 people in Kenya depend on the floriculture industry for their income and livelihoods. By helping exporters of flowers and other perishables reach customers in global markets, Emirates skycargo helps make an important economic contribution to the local economies.
In 2018, Emirates skycargo transported over 50,000 tonnes of flowers across the world. A majority of the flowers, over 27,000 tonnes, originated in Kenya. This is estimated to be around 15% of the overall flower exports from the nation. In January 2019, the carrier uplifted over 2,200 tonnes of flowers from Nairobi. During the same time, Emirates skycargo flew over 1,200 tonnes of flowers from Ecuador to Amsterdam.
Emirates skycargo also transports flowers in the belly hold of its passenger aircraft from other markets such as India, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Ethiopia.
Emirates skycargo operates a modern all wide body fleet of over 270 aircraft. Emirates skycargo’s fleet of Boeing 777 and Boeing 747 aircraft offer a cargo capacity of over 100 tonnes per flight. In 2018, the air cargo carrier moved closed to 2.6 million tonnes of cargo.
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