Brexit Could Leave Wedding Bouquets Stuck At The Border

Far removed from the political posturing and brinkmanship that capture most of the attention in Britain’s long and tedious departure from the European Union, Yme Pasma is deeply enmeshed in the mother of all logistical problems.

He is the chief operating officer of Royal FloraHolland, a marketplace where some 12 billion flowers and plants are sold a year — more than one-third of the worldwide trade in such blooms.

Inside hulking warehouses near Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport in the town of Aalsmeer, Royal FloraHolland operates a flower auction and a distribution center. A fleet of computer-guided forklifts whisks buckets of roses, boxes of amaryllis and other foliage — some grown in Holland, some flown in from Africa, Asia and Latin America — toward loading docks, to be placed on trucks and shipped to customers worldwide. The scent of flowers is pervasive, a weirdly anomalous whiff of perfume amid the clatter of machinery.

To read the rest of the story, please go to: New York Times