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n 2006 total exports amounted to 6.2 billion euro; one and a half times more than in 2000 and more than 35 times more than in 1970. New varieties of plants and flowers are launched on to the market each season. Nowhere else in the world are there as many fresh flowers and plants available as at the Dutch auctions. 

The Dutch auctions provide an international marketplace for a wide and deep assortment of Dutch and foreign floricultural products. Traders wishing to buy at a Dutch auction no longer have to buy via the clock. They can buy online from wherever they may be in the world. At the same time growers can use the Internet to keep a close watch on the selling process and check what prices their products are achieving. The digital trade in flowers and plants is growing explosively. Nowadays one third of all transactions are digital. The forecast is for this proportion to rise to no less than 80 percent in the next ten years. 

In addition to developing innovations in the fields of product and services, the floricultural sector also focuses strongly on energy consumption. By 2020 the sector aims to be entirely independent of fossil fuels.

Between 1980 and 2003 the Dutch greenhouse sector already succeeded in halving the energy consumption per product unit. In 2010 savings will have risen to 65%. Under the heading ‘Greenhouse as a source of Energy’ the sector has created a five point programme involving solar energy, geothermal heat, bio-fuels, low energy varieties and the improved utilisation of sunlight. In the future the sector can switch from being an energy consumer to becoming an energy supplier. Already more than 10% of household energy in the Netherlands is supplied by nurseries that use combined heat and power plants. Nurseries will be aiming to supply residual heat to private homes.