Fewer flowers but price remains

Flowers for mum: Faradiba making a floral arrangement for a customer at her home studio in Shah Alam.

KUALA LUMPUR: Mother’s Day is around the corner and there may not be enough flowers to shower mums with, but at least, prices will remain the same.

Cameron Highlands Floriculturists Asso­ciation president Lee Peng Fo said the heatwave had been “unforgiving” to the flower production, causing a decrease of between 10% and 20% in supply.

“Yes, we don’t have enough supply. The weather is too hot,” he told The Star yesterday.

Lee also agreed with a claim that most of the land in Cameron Highlands – once used for nurseries – were now being utilised for other purposes such as development.

“We have less land to grow flowers now due to the illegal development, which is as large as 60ha to 100ha,” he claimed.

Despite the low supply, Lee said the price for flowers would be maintained.

Faradiba Anuar, 27, who sells her floral arrangements on Instagram, agreed that there were fewer local flowers in the market.

“I work primarily with imported flowers like peonies but I have noticed that there are fewer local flowers like roses and carnations. These two are mainly from Cameron High­lands.

“On the contrary, imported flowers are thriving right now because they are in season,” she added.

For Mother’s Day, Faradiba said sales were drastically slower this year compared to last year, claiming that it was due to the economy.

“I thought it was just my sales but when I spoke to other florists, I found they also face the same situation.

“Last year, people didn’t mind paying RM350 for a bouquet. Now, most of my clients are on a tight budget,” she added.

In George Town, Isabell florist owner Clement Low said carnations would be dearer by between 20% and 30% this year.

“Actually, the price increase is quite small,” he said.

Lip Sin Floral Enterprise co-owner Lee Say Bee said there would be a hike of between 10% and 20% for their flower packages.

“Carnations are high in demand for Mother’s Day and the hike is due to the supply coming straight from Cameron Highlands,” she said, adding that a bouquet of mixed flo­wers would cost between RM100 and RM200.

“It will be more than RM200 if you want to add items such as cakes, chocolate or teddy bears,” she added.