If you have been to the Coloríginz office or warehouse(s), you might’ve noticed the people walking around wearing red coats. Ever wondered what their job is? Today it’s time for the answer! We asked a few questions to red-coat wearer, Lex of our quality control team.

"About 30 years ago I started working for OZ Export. It was my dad, who worked at OZ import at the time, who told me about some job opportunities here at OZ import. I, of course applied and since then I’ve been working for this company. I used to unpack the incoming goods: we put the products out on a table, counted the flowers, put a rubber band on them, hosed some water in a bucket, and there you have it! Ready for sale. It was a lot more manual work in comparison to nowadays. But of course, we had a lot less stock to process back in the day. What we now process in a day, we didn’t even stock in a whole week. Through the years I’ve had different job titles. For example, I have been truck driver for a while and we used to collect the flowers ourselves at the customs at Schiphol Airport. Now we have hired a company to do that work for us.

My dad who tipped about this job, worked here until he was 70, the last few years of his employment he delivered flowers here on the auction in Aalsmeer.

QUALITY CONTROL

Now I am quality controller of the incoming flowers and the flowers we have in stock here. Together with my team, we make sure that the products are matching our standards. We check deliveries, to see if there is no bad flower or bad leaf. In addition to this, we see if the length of the product is ok and if the amount of stems in a bunch is correct. Besides from checking the quality of the flower, we are also looking at the presentation on the cart. How are the flowers presented, what does the product look like in the bucket? We also test the lifespan and vase-life of flowers by putting them in a room with a higher temperature, so they can blossom.

When I started out here, there was no quality control like there is now. At the process table we took out the bad flowers, but we didn’t check the quality before or after that point. Together with the director at the time, we started this process. Now we have 5 quality controllers working at this facility.
 

MY DAY

Every morning we (the quality team) come together and talk through what products are going to come in during the day, and we decide who is going to check which delivery. We start out with the shipments who are sorted and ready for the assembly line. We randomly check the flowers of a shipment and make a quality report of every shipment we check. When we find something noticeable, we show this to the commerce department. The reports we make are available to the producer and the customer, we make sure the process is as transparent as possible. By checking the shipments consequently, we make sure we are able to offer the highest possible quality of our products.
 

PROUD

I am proud of how this company has grown over the years and I am very happy I was able to add to that success. Many years ago we started out in a small building with a tiny cooling cel. When we moved to the newly build VBA-Zuid terrain, we were met with a lot of improvements. And thanks to this modern way of working, the work processes became a lot easier.

I still enjoy my time here. A lot of new people are joining the company and I like to train and guide them. Not only from the point of view of a quality controller, but I also like to show them other aspects of the company. Because I did so many things over the years, I know a little bit about everything, and I love to help!