A blooming market

Braving the bidding frenzy at the largest flower auction in Africa with an early-bird tour of Joburg’s very own Multiflora flower market

The saying “wake up and smell the roses” takes on a different meaning when you’re heading for the Multiflora flower market in Johannesburg south at 4am.

This is round about the time that many of the wholesalers start their day, and even though I'm still yawning myself awake, it’s business as usual by the time

I get there. Already the team from the renowned Jason’s Flowers are checking their refrigerator rooms for gaps in their stock, and perusing the rows and rows of flowers waiting to take their places in the 7am flower auction.

This is Joburg’s other stock exchange, and the place from which the flowers of almost every city, town and village in the country originate. It might be a vastly different setting to the shiny Johannesburg Stock Exchange in Sandton, but the buying and selling that goes on in Multiflora’s impressive 50 000m2 of floor space is uncannily like the fluctuations of the various currencies battling for market dominance every day.

Grass roots

It’s a good thing, then, that my guide for the morning (Shantal Michael, niece to Jason Xavier of Jason’s Flowers) comes armed with a BComm Accounts degree and honours in Investment Management, because once the auction clock starts counting down it’s a ruthless three hours of bidding, stopping only momentarily to bring in the next batch of flower bunches and start all over again.

Flowers are sold by stem at the auction, so you need to know how many stems there are in a bunch (with roses, it’s always 20), how many bunches in a container and how many containers you need to bid for. All of this has to

calculated in a split second and, to make the maths just that much more intricate, you also have to remember that different flowers are sold in different stem lengths. Shantal has only recently joined the family business, but the flower industry is in her blood.

She is a third-generation flower wholesaler and proud of the fact that her grandfather first started selling flowers on the street. You could say that he planted the seed, so to speak, for Jason’s Flowers, which today is one of the largest flower wholesalers in the Multiflora community.

Going once...

This is no small feat, especially if you consider that Multiflora is the largest flower auction in Africa. Six days a week, Monday to Saturday, the 7am auction takes place on behalf of around 600 flower growers. It’s a bit of an understatement to say that there’s a lot to take in when you first walk into the auction hall, and meet the four auctioneers who are furiously and simultaneously

punting their products. If, like me, you’re not one of the 400-odd florists, distributors and wholesalers who regularly attend the auction, the grading and various letters signalling deviations in stems, petals, colours and lengths will be a blur of flashing red symbols.

The letter L, for example, stands for “two or more deviations”, Shantal informs me, in between helping Jason bid for certain stock they need that morning. H, meanwhile, warns of “discoloured or damaged stems and leaves”.

Mastering the codes takes months of practice, and then there’s also the auction etiquette to assimilate. You need to wait for a 30c drop on every new item

before pushing your button to place a bid. If you are too eager and hit the button before the 30c drop, then the auctioneer restarts the clock and automatically puts it up by R1, because he or she reads your eagerness as a signal that there is demand for the item.

“It’s basically the fastest finger first,” says Shantal, with a laugh at my overwhelmed expression. She assures me that the auctioneers do make mistakes themselves, sometimes setting the price too low. When that

happens, if you’re sharp enough to do the math and hit that button, then it’s your good luck. This cyclical kind of democracy is strangely comforting. 

Take time to grow the roses

It's really only once you’ve wrapped your head around the impressive systems that Multiflora has in place that you begin to appreciate the labour of love that drives the industry. I ask Jason why flowers are so expensive, and he immediately counters that he thinks flowers are cheap. Per stem, a rose costs

on average R1,50 to grow. If you take into account the various costs for labour, fertiliser, electricity needed to fuel the hot houses and so forth, then buying a bunch of roses that cost at least R30 to grow for around R50 (directly from a

wholesaler at Multiflora) seems something of a bargain. 

Multiflora has come a long way since it first opened its doors on October 19 1945 in Jeppe Street Johannesburg. Some things have changed, such as the commercialisation of a day like Valentine’s Day (undoubtedly the most lucrative day of the year for everyone in the flower industry), and some things have stayed the same since time immemorial.

Roses are still red, violets are still blue, and even though lilac is the colour “trending” at the moment, there’s nothing quite like a bunch of flowers to say “I love you”.

With thanks to ...

● Jason’s Flowers, Multiflora Building, Marjorie Str, City Deep, +27 (0)11 613 2818, jasonsflowers.co.za.

● Multiflora Head Office,+27 (0)11 613-4011, multiflora.co.za

*This article first appeared in the February edition of Sandton magazine.