Thirty million roses on board
Vrsta objave: Ostalo
Thirty million roses on board
Lufthansa Cargo freighters full of roses for Valentine's Day
Lufthansa Cargo flights currently heading for Frankfurt from South America and Africa have especially one product principally on board: tonnes of red roses destined for punctual delivery to high-street florists across Europe for Valentine's Day. All in all, the cargo carrier is shipping around 1,100 tonnes of the floral tokens to Frankfurt for the great day. That amounts in total to more than 30 million Valentine roses or about 13 full MD-11 freighters.
Growers in Kenya, Ecuador and Colombia are among the world's major producers of fresh-cut flowers. Lufthansa Cargo serves those countries with several freighter services weekly from its hub in Frankfurt. Transporting fresh flowers requires sophisticated and fast transport solutions to ensure the roses look fresh and dewy on Valentine's Day and for days afterwards. The flowers are picked in the morning by rose producers in the Kenyan uplands and transported immediately afterwards to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. They continue the journey overnight to Frankfurt on board a Lufthansa Cargo freighter for the briefest of stopovers. Within hours of touch-down mostly, the roses are shipped out by road or flown on to other destinations across Europe.
Overseas rose growers profit from a tropical climate in which flowers thrive all year round. Their production even when imported by air is more environment-friendly than roses cultivated by necessity in Europe with artificial irrigation and heated greenhouses, which generate more carbon emissions, according to a study, among others, from Britain's Cranfield University in 2007.
Lufthansa Cargo AG
Lufthansa Cargo ranks among the world's leading cargo carriers. In the 2011 business year, the airline transported around 1.9 million tonnes of freight and mail and sold 9.5 billion revenue tonne-kilometres. The Company currently employs about 4,500 people, worldwide. Lufthansa Cargo focuses on the airport-to-airport business. The cargo carrier serves some 300 destinations in more than 100 countries with its own fleet of freighters, the belly capacities of passenger aircraft operated by Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines, and an extensive road feeder service network. The bulk of the cargo business is routed through Frankfurt Airport.
Lufthansa Cargo is a wholly owned Lufthansa subsidiary of Deutsche Lufthansa AG.
Press contact
Lufthansa Cargo AG
Communications
Michael Göntgens
Tel.: +49 69 696 95447
Fax: +49 69 696 98 95447
michael.goentgens@dlh.de
www.lufthansa-cargo.com