In november 2012, when farms were preparing their plants for hooliday pinch for holiday season 2013, right after cutting the plants, the weather became very hot which influenced essentially the schedule of floral protucion's coming up for major holidays. The first wave of flowers due for St Valentine's day was ready for cutting a bit earlier than needed. Unfortunately, another wave of flowers, due for the Women's day shipments didn't come up because of cold snap in mid-february.
The shortage of production for 8th of march made its adjustments to farms' price policy as well as to logistics. The prices for roses broke all the historical records. There were few free offers actually, and there short "rests" were extremely expensive. But the customers had no other way out but to accept such prices to compensate shortages in their holiday orders.
Many charter flights, planned in advance for the expected peak of flower production ran a risk to remain vacant. Only workers of Van de Put company in Amsterdam airport, sighed with relief, because the cargo flow in this period was not so hard. That's why Van de Put could avoid collapse, that was breaking their work from time to time for the last few years.
Holiday shipments ended, but there was no overflow of production afterwards. Only in mid -March farms started drowning in their own production, and we got the opportunity to lower prices.
It's obvious that farms try to sell their production according to their price lists. Nevertheless market situation not always lets them maintain such price level. The market determines its own prices.
The farms basically are of two types: the ones who are flexible, who can negotiate and lower prices the way that market situation demands, and those who'd better thouw their production away but follow their price lists.
That's why starting from mid-March, the customers that do now follow strictly their farm preferences could have their orders for extra-low prices. The same situation took place on mid-April as well.
If the task for the purchase is to make the best price, one can achieve it based on a wide range of good farms with stable & positive references.