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Customercase: Summaflor

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‘A stunner of a year’

Just before the start of the summer flower season, we set foot on the Summaflor site in Rijnsburg. A European retail partner in the field of ornamental plant products which produces for large-scale retail chains, supermarkets and e-tailers. We speak with Bouquet Team Leader Niels van Tilburg, who gives us a tour. They're busy! Running at full speed for French and Swedish Mother's Days.

“The BouquetMaster runs at full speed!”

True all-rounders

It is great to enter a location with only Bercomex machines. Niels gives us a tour and explains: “Over the years we have accumulated 5 flower lines, 2 conveyor belts, 9 water filling machines and 2 BouquetMasters. With 70 staff in the low season and up to 160 in the high season, we deliver all kinds of bouquets. To Scandinavia, Switzerland, France and Italy, but also the Baltic States and Russia. Currently, we are producing for the French and Swedish Mother’s Day and we are making bouquets for the Danish Bloomon variant. That last one I’m proud of! The luxury bouquets that the Danes order online, we produce immediately and are delivered to the customer the next day. That’s what I call speed,” Niels laughs.

Sounds like quite the operation, and it is. But with a background in the events world, this is Niels’ cup of tea. Niels: “We also make custom bouquets for each customer. In Germany, for example, the short coffee bouquets sell like hot cakes, and for another client, we even add a chocolate to each bouquet.

Because of the BouquetMaster we now run at 1.5x speed

Slowly Niels guides us to the two BouquetMasters that are installed in the back of the production area. From a distance you can already see the bouquets pop out of the machine. Niels explains: “Because we get a lot of demand for coffee bouquets (short bouquets), the cradles of the machine had to be shortened. We purchased the first BouquetMaster about 1.5 years ago hoping to run it 50% of the time, but by now it is working at full capacity and we can even use the second BouquetMaster half the time.”

The investment in a BouqetMaster is one that is not made lightly. But when you weigh the results up against the costs, it quickly pays for itself. Niels: “We always calculate in bouquets per person per hour and have calculated that each employee on the BouquetMaster line now produces 1.5 times more bouquets than before. A big plus if you ask me! In addition, all the flowers are now arranged equally so that each bouquet is the same. A next step in uniformity.”

Niels is not only enthusiastic about the yield per employee. The savings in the number of employees and level of training may be of even greater interest to him. “Instead of 20, we now put 5 flower binders at a machine. They perform a final check. And I expect to be able to scale down quickly as we get to know the machine better. This is the learning process we are following together with Bercomex. We need less and less trained staff, and that is very convenient. Training a good flower binder easily takes several weeks. And then it remains to be seen whether she really has a feeling for it so that she can become productive quickly”, says Niels.

Time to take stock

The end of the season is approaching for Summaflor. Time to take stock and set up improvement processes. Niels explains: “We had a stunner of a year because due to corona, the sales of flowers in the supermarket, one of our biggest buyers, were extremely high. We also see that Dutch supermarkets want to focus more and more on expanding their range of flowers. In the coming off-season, we will have a few months to prepare for this trend. One of the main goals for next season? Running the second BouquetMaster at full speed too!”

“We use less skilled labour”

Customer case in pictures

  • 1 & 3 core binder

    The 1 and 3-core binder binds the bouquet firmly before being cut to size.

  • Adjustable bouquet length

    All bouquet cradles can be adjusted by one lever.

  • CRP Double knife

    Double knife for silent and sharp cutting of thick and thin stems.
See all photo's

Advantages of the BouquetMaster

Uniformity of bouquets

The BouquetMaster delivers identical bouquets. Each bouquet is showing the same configuration of the flowers. An extra quality check is created with the picture of the end result on the sleeving part display

High capacity

The BouquetMaster provides an increased productivity per person. Depending on the amount of stems the output is 390 – 1300 bouquets per hour.

Anywhere in the world insight in bouquets and the productivity

The Bercomex Insight Tool gives us the possibility to configure new bouquets but also to see live and history production figures. The website can be opened on all devices with internet.

Friendly working climate and employability of personnel

For our employees it is much friendlier to create bouquets. The BouquetMaster prevents complaints on the wrist resulted from holding the sometimes heavy bouquets. The easy instructions make the training of personnel much easier, but also the flexibility of employing them.

Would you like to seen one of our BouquetMasters in action?

    Would you like to know if this machine suits your situation?

    Please contact us:

    Peter van Wijk

    Call +31 (0)229 502 150
    or send an email to:
    sales@bercomex.com

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