The experience of Dobbe Farms

The Utilysys® folding crate meets all requirements for storage and processing and there is little to no failure. “A real asset to our company”, says Benno Dobbe. Benno Dobbe is the owner and CEO of Dobbe Farms LLC in Woodland Washington and Holland America Flowers, LLC in Arroyo Grande, California. Hugo Dobbe leads the Dutch part of this American company as Export Manager.

Processing

All Lily purchases by Dobbe in the Netherlands are packed in Utilysys® folding crates on the processing line of CNB Bovenkarspel . The conditioned storage and dispatch to one of the two forcing plants in the USA also take place there.

Easy to use

After arrival, the pallets are unloaded from the sea container and placed in the conditioned room at the nursery. The Utilysys® crates are easy to use, both for mounting and folding (good unlocking is important). The empty crates are compact on the pallet and do not fall off easily during transport and they do not blow away in the yard. In the flowerbulb nursery this works exactly like in the flower producing nursery.

Cost efficiency

After emptying, 270 folded crates fit on a pallet for return cargo by container from the west coast of America to the Netherlands. On 22 pallets 5,940 crates can easily fit into a sea container. Loosely stacked fit more, but Dobbe opts for the most workable solution without stacking and destacking.

Export manager Hugo Dobbe indicates that they use Utilysys® folding crates as much as possible because it is cheaper. “With empty folding crates so much more fit into a sea container than regular lily crates, that retrieval is cheaper than buying second-hand or new lily crates. Moreover, we have the advantage because we ship to our own branches in the US and not first to a collection point. It also makes a big difference in storage costs. The calculation therefore works out well. The company has been using them since 2011 and has earned back the costs for a while. We bring them back to the Netherlands for less than 1 euro and a used normal lily crate costs around 2 euros.” According to Hugo Dobbe, the reason for the switch to Utilysys® crates was purely an economic consideration.

Dobbe Farms LLC
De Boeg 92
1502 GW Zaandam
Netherlands

Phone  +31 75 670 6200

Website www.hollandamericaflowers.com/