It was still cold and dark outside just before 6 a.m. on a chilly morning in March when I approached the large warehouse in Burnaby that houses the United Flower Growers (UFG) auction. In the parking lot, flower farmers from all over British Columbia unloaded pink, yellow, and purple tulips by the bucket. Inside the no-frills building, dozens more people arranged the flowers by lots on steel wagons in preparation for the next three hours, during which thousands of blooms would change hands in the largest Dutch-style flower auction in North America.
The unusual auction works backward. Sellers set an opening price for a wagon-load of blooms. Then a clock starts ticking while the price drops by the second. Buyers must judge how long to wait before they make an offer and 'stop the clock' to get the product for that price. If they wait too long, another bidder may scoop the deal. On the late winter morning I was there, the first local tulips were selling cheap — 25 cents a stem. Local retailers sell them tied in five-stem bunches for five to eight dollars.
I was there as a guest of UFG marketing representative Bob Pringle. Tulips, he said, are B.C.'s number one floral product. "The auction sells about 11.5 million of them each year," he told me. The UFG itself is a co-op of B.C. flower growers. Through the auction, which operates online as well as in-person, the co-op sells flowers to wholesalers and florists from all over Western Canada. Just under 90 per cent are grown in B.C., Pringle said. The rest are imported, mainly from South America with some coming from Asia.
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