Fragrance fades out of flower business in Srirangam market

The Srirangam flower market is famous for exporting flowers to Singapore and Malaysia. More than 100 traders are in involved in the exports business. They purchase the flowers from Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Hosur farmers. They get a steady supply of flowers from these areas as they deal in bulk quantities. 

Drought situation in flower producing areas have already brought the volume of the trade from 10 tonnes to one tonner per day. The demonetisation announcement further affected their business. Now post note ban, the volume has come down below one tonne per day making it difficult for the traders to make ends meet. 

“This has resulted in a drastic fall in the prices of the flowers,” said a trader. For instance, on Friday, a heavy demand day for flowers, the local samanthi come down to Rs 20 per kg from the Rs 80 to Rs 100 per kg. Javanthi is being sold between Rs 2 to Rs 20 from the level of Rs 50. A bundle of rose with 20 flowers is being sold at Rs 10 which was Rs 50 to Rs 80 earlier. The sanna malli sold for Rs 40 to Rs 50 dropped to a meagre Rs 5 and the kozhi kondai poo too fell to Rs 20 from Rs 40 to Rs 50. The price of assorted rose too fell by the half. 

“Despite our alerts to the merchants in Hosur, Thoppur, Rayakottai and Bengaluru on the falling prices and demand, they are loading the flowers to Srirangam. They seem desperate to push the stock out,” says M Rangaraj, secretary, Srirangam Flower Merchants Association to DTNext. 

“What we can do with the heavy supply. Except a few regular customers including Ayyappa devotees the demand for the flowers are still low. The sales to tourists in the temple town has taken a beating without enough cash in circulation. We just throw them away in desperation suffering huge loss,” Rangaraj adds.