For the first time since it begun its
operations in 1997, Eldoret International Airport exported
flowers out of the facility over the weekend.
The airport, which has been condemned as a ‘white
elephant’ for long, was a vibrant facility on Saturday
when it airlifted 36 tonnes of flowers to Jomo Kenyatta
International Airport for onward transmission to Holland.
And it came with a sigh of relief by farmers, who have all
along been transporting the flowers by road to JKIA, some
350 kilometres away, before their being exported to Amsterdam
for sale.
This has not always augured well for the farmers. Due to
the pot holes and distance to Nairobi, the flowers have
been losing in quality, but now this will be a thing of
the past, former Central Bank of Kenya governor Micah Cheserem,
who is a flower grower, said on the weekend.
Due to the low quantity of flowers, farmers were not able
to transport their flowers by air earlier because their
were no direct flights, but now things have changed following
the insecurity experienced in the country. It has forced
the flower farmers to pull together, thus enabling them
use a flight.
Among the farms that transported the flowers through the
airport were Maji Mazuri, Equartor Flowers and Sirgoek.
About 10 farms growing flowers in the North Rift produce
about 40 tonnes, enough to fill an airbus 300 and be exported
directly to Europe.
Speaking before the flowers were loaded onto Egypt Air Cargo,
which had off-loaded some goods, the manager of the airport
Mr Peter Wafula said it was a “dream come true”
for the 10-year-old facility, which had tried to export
agricultural commodities but in vain.
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