Learn more about the people from the community. In this section Roel Huiden from Royal FloraHolland answers 12 questions.
What is your function with Royal FloraHolland?
As Consultant Supply Chain Innovation I am responsible for the implementation of logistics innovation in our supply chain. I focus on the domain digitization and trade compliance in the international floriculture.
What is the specialty of Royal FloraHolland?
Together with our members to offer the widest range of flowers and plants through our marketplace.
What did you want to be when you were 10 years old?
I never had a specific job in mind, but I was always interested in IT. So I already knew I wanted a job in that direction.
What do you like most about your current job?
That I again and again can and may widen my horizon. Two years ago I had barely knowledge of cusotms processes, airfreight or seafreight. Nowadays that is quite different, partly because I was given the opportunity to pursue a Master of Customs and Supply Chain Compliance. Combined with IT and floricultural knowledge, this offers lots of opportunities for supply chain optimization in our industry.
What do you do on weekends to relax?
With photography and photo editing I can entertain myself for hours. And whether permitting, the terrace!
What threats do you see for the floral industry?
As a cooperative, we need to respond more rapidly to changing demand and new business models resulting from digitization. The auction system as we use it for over a hundred years does not always fit anymore with the needs of our customers. So we have to find other (digital) ways to find connections to customers and consumers.
And what opportunities?
If I focus on the (inter)national supply chain, we can gain a lot through better predictability of supply and demand, for example by setting up the flower transport more efficiently. Even in the cold chain is yet to win a lot; the lower the temperature on the route, the longer you can enjoy the products at home. By the greater predictability sea freight will also develop on more routes.
If you were president of Schiphol, what would you do first?
Ensure that cargo can still grow sufficiently. And Schiphol as a “preferred flow hub” continues!
At what place in ranking is Schiphol airport in 5 years?
Still top 3. And cut flowers still number one.
The question that Saskia van Pelt (Schiphol Cargo) has for you: What does Roayl FloraHolland do to innovate in the flower supply chain?
In the airfreight chain for flowers quality (cold chain) and rapid transit of goods are of great importance. For rapit transitwe examine for some time together with Dutch Customs and NVWA how we can accelerate vorder procedures. Not only at import, but we also look at the export process. The first step is flowers the import process from Kenia, good for 100,000 tons of flowers. What we want is to improve the exchange of information and that the information flow anticipates (rather than having a retarding effect) on the logistics by digitizing physical documents and completed clearance before the landing of the plane. We are working towards trusted trade lanes. Not only an innovation for floriculture, but an important innovation to the benefit of the whole floriculture supply chain.
In collaboration with KLM and Schiphol we started last year the “Holland Flower Alliance”. An open initiative in which we want to organize the supply chain better in terms of cold chain, information sharing and packaging. Meanwhile several parties participate in onze of these groups.
Who do you want to tranfer the baton to the “Meet the Community” questions?
Sebastiaan Sintemaartensdijk, Dutch Customs
What question would you like to ask him?
About five years from now, what will be the biggest change in the area of customs control at Schiphol?