Arrival and unpacking
The reefer container SUDU00511228 with the Colombian fresh flowers arrived in Rotterdam (Holland) on December 9th 2006. Due to very bad wetter at sea there was a delay of about 14 hours in the total transit time. Due to this delay, the container could not be scanned upon arrival, but had to wait until the day after. Unfortunately the Dutch Customs in the harbour decided to check the complete container and due to union issues did not work on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11. Therefore the reefer container had to stay in the harbour for an extra 2 days and finally was able to be transported on Tuesday December 12th to Aalsmeer (Van der Put Fresh Cargo) for the final import declaration and phytosanitarian inspections.
After unloading the container, the temperature of the flowers was taken. Besides that, an FTG delegation was on the spot to visually check the flowers directly upon arrival to have a first impression about the general condition.
The first impression taught us that the in general the flowers survived well the long trip from Cartagena. Besides the fact that you now could see very well the impact of the bad quality boxes, there were no real negative issues at the point. Although the air temperature of the unloading hall at van der Put should be mentioned as this is just an isothermal hall and not a cold store, so the temperature over there got up to 11-12 degrees. This way some condensation was seen within the big bags, as the flowers were waiting there for a few hours for final inspections. After inspection of the PD (Dutch Phyto Inspectors), the flowers were loaded back into a normal truck for the final inland transport to the unpacking location where flowers were to be unpacked completely box by box.
