Many years ago, Mr. Hans Vonk started growing Lathryus in Holland for the Dutch market. At that time the market for Lathyrus was still a good market due to good quality flowers and some novelties in the assortment The fact that Lathyrus was the Dutch Queen mother’s favourite flower also gave the Lathryus a real boost in popularity, not only in Holland but also in the USA. In order to have more flowers, for a longer period during the year and being earlier on the market, a new production location was installed in Italy.

Main problem for Mr. Hans Vonk was the fact that although the quality of the Lathyrus produced in Italy was very good, the flower did not arrive in good condition (due to high sensibility of the Lathyrus). In order to meet the increasing market demands, Mr. Vonk developed a special fluid that would keep the Lathyrus in conditions until their final destination. After trailing and experiencing for some time, Mr. Vonk came up with a gel that had the right ingredients in order to receive the flowers in good conditions for selling them in Holland. Trading companies also picked up the concept and started to export the Lathyrus in the gel towards the USA (there is a large market for Lathyrus in the USA). Although difficult to prove, the gel indeed contributed to the growing popularity and exports of Lathyrus to what it is nowadays.

Sometime after the discovery of the gel, producers and exporters of other cut flowers began to show interest in the gel as globalisation and worldwide expansion of flower production was facing some problems. These problems existed of not being able to have fresh material at their final destination, at increasing transport costs with decreasing capacity. These were the main reasons for Mr. Vonk to re-develop the concept and to make it also useful for other types of flowers, to transport them in excellent conditions towards the final destination. The results were that good that it finally resulted in Flower Transport Gel®.

Mission

The mission of FTG is to contribute to a world that offers flowers at a good price/quality range for all involved, by offering the possibility to decrease transport costs, produce the flowers where they natively should be produced and without loosing quality of the final product.