98 million plants

The Netherlands is where the German Praktiker group of companies sources around 70 per cent of its supplies of live plants for the Praktiker and Max Bahr trading formats in Germany. To handle the logistics it utilizes a local service provider who has been working exclusively for the company since the beginning of this year: Baas Plantenservice in Boskoop, whose central logistics interface is consequently at the disposal of the Praktiker group, which is ranked second in terms of German sales figures through its two trading formats. Since 1998 the plant company had worked for Max Bahr, the DIY retailer that was still in family hands at the time. Then, one year after the latter’s acquisition by Praktiker in 2007, the Dutch firm began to make deliveries to the group’s original trading format as well. Boasting 26 000 m² of warehousing space, Baas claims to be one of Europe’s biggest entrepôts for the organised live plant business. Around 330 000 CC containers are handled via 76 loading ramps every year, up to 16 000 daily at peak times. Then within 24 hours at most the product will arrive in the store, so that the time between placing the order with the horticulturalist to delivery at the sales point comes to under 48 hours. Baas uses the phone for communication with the individual stores. As a logistics specialist, the company not only looks after route planning and original freight scheduling, but also order picking and grouping with up to 20 different products per container. Storage and management of the approx. 20 mio labels, plus managing the empties business are also part of the range of services on offer. The total value of the business transacted with Praktiker amounts to more than € 100 mio. The Praktiker group works with two other main logistics centres besides Baas. One of these is also in the Netherlands and the other in Germany, not far from the Dutch border. It sources its plants from about 400 plant nurseries. Only 15 per cent of the products – after the 70 per cent from the Netherlands – come from Germany, with the remaining 15 per cent shared between Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy and Ireland. The 15 employees in the central plant buying department shift a volume that has seen steady growth in recent years. More than 98 mio units of the plants listed at Praktiker and Max Bahr were sold in 2009; 17.3 mio of these were pansies, 10.8 mio geraniums and two mio conifers. That comes to more than 400 000 containers per year – as many as would fit into…