KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's flower industry is wilting under pressure from cheap imports and rising production costs.
A fledgling national body estimates that in the past two years more than 300 mainly small growers have gone out of business.
United Flower Auctions managing director Bruce O'Brien said domestic growers were finding it too tough. Their income had been stable for the past 10 years but the cost of fertiliser, wages and heating greenhouses had spiralled in the past two years.
"And on top of that you're starting to get a proliferation of cheaper flowers starting to come into the country."
There were about 1200 growers two years ago but this had fallen to between 700 and 800.
The industry has a turnover of about $100 million a year, 40 per cent of that from domestic sales
"More people are going in to growing tomatoes at the moment - 20 years ago it was tomato growers getting into growing flowers."
Some flowers such as violets and marigolds were now barely commercially available within New Zealand.
Auckland florist Lerena Glucina said the narrowing range of flowers made it hard to supply specialist events.
"When I first started you could buy everything off auction. Now you have to order everything and there's not enough to go around. It makes it really tough to do different things," she said.
Another florist Like Kamerman agreed, saying the range has fallen markedly during the past two decades but growers who followed fleeting trends were partly to blame.
O'Brien is at the forefront of a move to start a national flower promotion group to boost the local industry with the theme being use it or lose it.
"We're losing our growers and if we continue to do this the consumer is going to have to rely on imported flowers from places like India, China, Colombia, Ecuador. They won't have fresh cut New Zealand flowers available to them. With [reduced] discretionary spending flowers are going to be the lowest thing on the list but if we keep this up there's not going to be a New Zealand industry."
O'Brien said supermarkets - which hold about 20 per cent of market share - could do much more to promote flower sales by taking better care of flowers on display.
The flower industry boomed in the late 80s and early 90s when former corporate workers with redundancy cheques bought lifestyle flower growing businesses.
Over 50 per cent of the production is in Northland, South Auckland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty.
