The Netherlands is the most important link between Kenya’s cut flower industry and European retailers and consumers. In 2015, the country was the destination of over 60% of Kenya’s exports. Consequently, the question of how the Dutch floriculture network gained and managed to retain its pivotal role in the cut flower industry is central in the analysis of Lake Naivasha’s relation to European floricultural actors. The Dutch cut flower hub becomes even more interesting when one considers the dynamics of cut flower trade, retail, and consumption. The shift of flower production to equatorial countries, the increasing flower sales of retail chains, and the growing importance of standards in retail are fundamental changes that challenge the established linkages and roles within the flower network.

Nevertheless, much like markets, firms, and the forging of trade relations in chain-studies, the Dutch cut flower network has not been made the object of inquiry in any previous studies of the Kenyan cut flower industry (see e.g., Hale, Opondo 2005; Gibbon, Riisgaard 2014). In this chapter, I want to open this ‘black box’ (Latour 1987, 1) and address the questions of how the cut flower industry developed into a global network, how the Dutch flower industry, as a main hub of trade and production, was reorganised by current dynamics in this network, and how it managed to sustain its pivotal role despite shifting relations in the cut flower industry.

In the following pages, I want to give four main answers to these questions: firstly, I will show that the changing role of the Dutch flower industry can be related to general tendencies in agricultural trade and current dynamics in the sales and consumption of flowers. Secondly, the Dutch flower industry plays a crucial role in reframing the cut flower market, although it has undergone fundamental changes. Key market encounters are tightly bound to Dutch flower networks including traditional auction sales, but also recently established direct sales and virtual encounters between producers and sellers. Thirdly, the definition of what is actually traded is closely related to these market encounters in the Netherlands.