Valentine’s Day shoppers aren’t loving the price of roses this year. Customers have reported paying as much as $100 for a bouquet of a dozen roses. Florists say they’ve had to raise prices as much as 20% since last year. Fresh cut roses must often travel thousands of miles before they appear in the outstretched hands of your beloved. Harvested by the hundreds of millions in countries like Colombia, Kenya, and the Netherlands, roses are delicately packed into the bellies of thousands of cargo planes, and then airlifted across the world in the weeks leading up to Feb. 14.
Lately, air freight prices have skyrocketed thanks to lingering supply chain disruptions brought on by the pandemic. As ships clogged the world’s ports, many waiting for weeks to unload their cargo, retailers decided to avoid ocean shipping and import their cargo by air. That prompted cargo airlines to raise their prices to take advantage of soaring demand. Now florists are paying more to import roses and passing the cost onto shoppers with more expensive bouquets. Price hikes are being felt most keenly in the US, which imports more roses than any other country.
Airports have also been bracing for another record year for roses. Miami International Airport, which handles 91% of US flower imports, estimated that it will bring in 1.4 billion flowers in the run-up to Valentine’s Day this year—up 17% from last year. Kenyan flower farmers requested an airlift before Valentine’s Day
This year, Kenya, the largest export of roses to Europe, struggled to find enough cargo space to deliver its usual shipment of flowers to European and Middle Eastern markets. Normally, Kenyan roses travel to their destinations in the cargo holds of passenger flights—but as passenger travel has fallen during the pandemic, the country was left with less than half its usual air cargo capacity in the run-up to Valentine’s Day.
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