Kenya’s aggressive push for middle eastern flower market

The Kenya pavilion at the Expo 2020 Dubai has been the main centre of attraction as the world marks Valentine’s Day with half a million roses gifted to those attending the trade fair in United Arab Emirates.

This is the latest move by the Kenya Flower Council to leverage on the mega expo as it seeks to expand into new markets amid growing recovery of the floriculture sub-sector after COVID-19 dampened the industry’s fortunes.

According to KFC chief executive Clement Tulezi, the event is a platform for the country to market one of its most famous exports, given that floriculture is Kenya’s number two export after tea.

“We actually dedicated this day to the floriculture sub-sector because its Valentine’s Day. We produce close to about 30% if all the world’s roses.We are here to craft agreements, we are having B2B sessions between our growers , exporters and buyers in this region. We see business coming out of this. We are having some business with UAE but, it is still small.  A lot of our flowers go to Amsterdam and them find their way here but we are telling them we can shorten the supply chain, within five hours we can have flowers from Kenya in this region, arrive as fresh as they can be and even minimise the cost,” said Tulezi.

According to Tulezi, Kenya produces flowers of high quality that can compete globally thus its looking at the expo to enter new and emerging markets such as the Middle East.

KFC is looking to increase its market share in the Middle East from the current 1% to about 25% by seeking new markets and leveraging on Dubai’s logistics capabilities to penetrate the Middle East and the Asian markets.

The demand for flowers has continued to recover after collapse of the European auction due to logistics hiccups related to COVID – 19 as the council seeks new markets and cut dependance on EU which accounts for 70% of total flower exports annually on average.

Last year Kenya sold Kshs. 2 billion ($18 million) of cut flowers to the Middle East but Tulezi says the council is looking to triple the sale to about Kshs. 5.6 billion ($50 million) flowers by targeting countries under he Gulf Cooperation Council.

This comes as Kenya courts GCC nations for investment in manufacturing, trade and ICT during a business meeting which is slated for Tuesday headed by President Uhuru Kenyatta.

“What we a looking at is a huge opportunity in the GCC region. Our current exports to the GCC is not massive. We are looking at a market of 54 million people and $3.5 trillion in GDP which is bigger than the size of the entire African economy. That’s  a huge consumer power in this part of the world. For example the floriculture sector, we export flowers into this region directly but that is actually 10% of what they buy and they are actually buying a lot of our flowers from the rest of world,” added Jaswinder Bedi, KEPROBA Chairman.

The expo which has been ongoing since October last year is slate to end next month.

Millions of visitors are expected to make their way into this 1083 acres of space hosting the Expo2020 Dubai with more than 190 countries showcasing various products to buyers.

Besides cut flowers, the Kenyan pavilion hosted by the Kenya Export Promotion and Branding Agency (KEPROBA) is also showcasing tourism products, coffee, tea, energy and ICT opportunities.