Tetsuya Kawakami

　I am pleased to say Japanese customer “ A Happy New Year”, is it a little late?
I have been in Holland, and investigated in Van Zanten from January 2nd till the end of last week.
I was a staff of checking bulbs when we received, container of bulbs before shipping in the cooling storage and planting bulbs in the test greenhouse.
In this time, I would like to report about ①the importance of employee in an export company and a grower company, ②the present situation of exporters.

①Bulbs after harvest are, grading in grower companies, supply to exporter companies, passing in checking by them, through washing, disinfection & packing, and export them to many countries. I think what the importance in this process is, the staff of the checking quality in the export company and the quality of employee who does selecting in a grower company. In the export company, they check quality in sample cases that are picked out from each lot, in this process, if bulbs have double noses, un-grading or bad condition, it will be very important how staffs find them strictly, (and also in the export company, they cannot check all of the bulbs), the high quality selecting by employees in grower company after harvest. In this visit, I really felt bulbs quality does not depend only on fields, bud also processing accuracy after harvest is also so important.

②Now Dutch export companies have received bulbs from mainly France, but the amount is getting decreased gradually. Packing process is almost finished, on the other hand, shipping process is so busy. Also, an export company is busy in planting for the test forcing of new varieties in the test greenhouse and for Keukenhof Lily Parade in the middle of May (they will plant about 50 varieties for Keukenhof Lily Parade in Van Zanten).