The Keukenhof flower exhibition will open its doors on 21 March 2024. The 7 million flower bulbs that are planted in the park can't wait to bloom for a crowd of 1.4 million visitors from the Netherlands and abroad. Naturally, Keukenhof is famous for its stretched tulip gardens. However, there is more to see and do, like visiting the cut flowers shows where you will see the cream of the Dutch crop that showcases a multitude of floral beauty.
There are Rose Shows, Hyacinths Shows, Freesia and Chrysanthemum Shows, and a Tulip Show. A visit to the Nassau Pavillion will show you the best Dutch growers have these days. One of the prominent cut flower suppliers is Dutch grower Ronico. Every year, this company puts its heart and soul into showcasing some of the special tulips they grow. Also this year, so it is time to meet the people and products of the world's biggest grower of tulip bulbs and tulip cut flowers.
Ronico
Robèr de Wit has worked in the tulip business his whole life. His strong drive to produce the best tulips comes from the awareness of how happy you can make people with flowers, in his case tulips. He has a team of highly skilled professionals around him to make this mission come true.
The workforce of Ronico is partially permanent and partially flexible. The year-round team consists of 25 people and is added with around 250 flexible workers during the tulip season.
"It is funny that not many people outside our direct business range know Ronico," says Robèr de Wit, the CEO of this mega bulb grower. And it is true because when you grow 300 hectares of tulip bulbs and supply your tulips to many major retailers, you'd expect some brand awareness in the floral sector.
Robèr can smile about this observation because Ronico is a thriving business, settled well just outside the town of Hem in the northwest region of the Netherlands. Still, he is planning to do more marketing to get more people to know what a great company he has with his brother Niels and father Cor (hence the name 'Ro-Ni-Co') manage. In fact, their business started in the year 1939, so the expertise on how to grow the perfect tulip bulbs and grow the best flowers from these spans already three generations.
Monitoring the Whole Chain
If you look at Ronico with a bird's eye view, it is a company that covers the whole chain, from the very beginning to the supermarket shelf. This way quality is constantly monitored, guaranteeing a top tulip for end consumers.
Robèr de Wit:
"We grow tulip bulbs outdoors on 300 hectares, all in the Netherlands. Those nurseries are located in other Dutch provinces, like Groningen and Flevoland. When the bulbs are harvested in July, we bring them here first for a temperature treatment, and then put them in our three greenhouse locations close by to grow a total of 140 million tulip cut flowers during the winter season."
One of Robèr's colleagues is Jeroen Laan, responsible for planning and forcing schedules. He adds:
"The next step is that those cut tulips are collected in the facility in Hem where we have our head office to create ready bunches for direct transport to big supermarket chains."
Supporter of Dutch Floriculture
Ronico likes to support Dutch floriculture by sponsoring floral events. Locally, this is done by participating in Drieban Flora, an event with growing importance regionally that is held every February in the adjacent town of Venhuizen. On a national level this is done by being part of the National Tulip Day, the yearly traditional kick-off of the tulip season that takes place in Amsterdam where hordes of people come to pick their own tulips. And then, of course, Keukenhof is a next-level global showcase where Ronico collaborates with some amazing cut flowers in the Tulip Show.
Robèr:
"Keukenhof is a huge tourist attraction. It brings many people to the Netherlands. It is a fantastic promotional tool for the floriculture sector and its products. As a grower, participating gives you a beautiful opportunity to showcase your products to a very big international crowd. It is nice to hear back from visitors of our industry that they have seen us there. It is good for the awareness of the Ronico brand, and it encourages us also to work on our brand awareness in other ways."
Jeroen:
"It is also important to show that we in the Netherlands are and remain proud of the tulip. There have been quite a few untruths about bulb and flower cultivation lately, especially about pesticides that we do not use at all. We have been consciously working on sustainable tulips and biological pesticides for years, especially because otherwise we are absolutely not allowed to supply our products to any retail company, who are very strict about that."
Showing Tulips at Keukenhof
If you are a regular visitor to Keukenhof, you will have seen the tulips of Ronico already a couple of times.
Robèr:
"We have been actively involved in sponsoring the Tulip Show of Keukenhof for ten years. We came on board via L&M Rijnsburg, which is a member of One Flora Group these days. We are not the supplier of the bulb fields in Keukenhof, but focus on the cut flower to show the product as we supply it to our retail partners."
Jeroen:
"Besides the regular single-petaled tulips like the pink Dream Dance, we will show this year some special tulips like the orange-yellow triumph-shaped Tulip Esta Bonita, the red triumph-shaped Tulip Saedov, and the purple double-flowered Tulip Guns n Roses. We bring in a total of around 10,000 tulips from up to 30 varieties to the Keukenhof Tulip Show, spread over the eight weeks of opening."
Tulpen.nu
Perhaps it's a comfort for Robèr and his team to know that, although the name Ronico may not yet sound familiar to many people inside and outside the floral industry, their own tulip promotion website Tulpen.nu does surely ring a bell with many professionals and (Dutch) end-consumers who can order their ready tulip-bouquets mixed or mono, including a selection of vases directly in the linked webshop.
One thing is for sure. If you hadn't heard about Ronico, now you have. And you will hear a lot more from this forward big grower of tulip bulbs and cut flowers in the near future.
