For about 10 years, Holex Flower has been using Pagter's Porto 10 for shipping their hydrangeas worldwide. Every week, the Aalsmeer-based export company ships some 3.9 million stems of a wide range of flowers. Around holidays like Mother's Day, this can rise to as many as 3.5 million stems a day, says Remco Engbers, responsible for the packing department and purchasing materials at Holex Flower.
"We used to send the flowers dry, per stem, or with Flower Transport Gel. However, after several tests, the latter proved to be the least effective for the flowers. Sending dry was also not ideal, and so we eventually ended up with Pagter's Porto 10. With the Porto 10, flowers are hydrated during transport without water spilling out of the packaging. The Porto contains enough water for an average of two to three days of transport," he explains.
Within the hydrangea season (May - October), around 21,000 Porto 10s a month are used at Holex Flower, going all over the world as part of air freight shipments of hydrangeas. Many of the exports go to the United States, the Middle East, China, Canada, and Australia, Remco says. "Everything we send we don't get back, so the Porto 10 stays with the end customer. They are made of recycled material and can also be reused."
Remco continues: "In the beginning, the Porto 10 were loose in the box and had to be filled one by one. That took a lot of time. We then had a filling machine built at ATT that could fill the Porto 10 per tray. At the push of a button, you immediately fill 32 units, each with exactly 80 milliliters of water. At the packing tables, the Porto 10 is then attached to a bunch of hydrangeas, where it sticks to the bottom of the stems, giving them moisture during transport. It cannot leak and the stems stay nice and straight. This fits well with our commitment to sustainable packaging and transport."
For more information:
Remco Engbers
Holex Flower
[email protected]
www.holex.com
Jurgen Vermeulen 
Pagter Innovations
[email protected]
www.pagter.com