CollegeTour inspires students for horticulture

Glastuinbouw Nederland, Greenport Aalsmeer and VNO-NCW Westland-Delfland joined forces via CollegeTour 2022 to connect young, new talent to greenhouse horticulture companies in the Westland, Oostland, Aalsmeer and North Holland North regions (Glastuinbouw Nederland, 2021). Via CollegeTour, MBO students get to know the horticulture sector. In addition, they participate in an online CollegeTour in the classroom with futurologist Richard van Hooijdonk, complete challenging assignments, visit a cool horticulture project and can use matchmaking to look for an internship and/or job in greenhouse horticulture (Glastuinbouw Nederland, 2021). A new edition of CollegeTour took place in November. This time it was the turn of Dutch Flower Group. Marcel Zandvliet, CMO at Dutch Flower Group, took the students on a tour of the full breadth of the floriculture sector. From logistics to supply chain management and the importance of sustainability. After the guest lecture, the students visited one of the retail companies of Dutch Flower Group: The Floral Connection in De Kwakel. Here they were given a tour of the premises of Rick van Rijn and Iris de Waal and saw how flower and plant concepts are conceived and developed for several supermarket chains throughout Europe. As an assignment, the students were allowed to write down during the tour what The Floral Connection is already doing in the field of sustainability and give their vision on what can still be improved in terms of sustainability in and around the business processes and the location itself. We hope to have inspired the students to get started in the wonderful world of floriculture after their studies!