PRESS RELEASE

April 10, 2015: Samskip and the VGB - the Dutch Association of wholesalers in Floricultural products - have set up and successfully completed the first rail freight transports of plants by reefer container from the Netherlands to Sweden.

The so-called flora container has been developed by Unit45 to enable plants and flowers transport by multimodal rail. With an internal width of 2.50 metres and internal height of 2.78 metres the unit loads 43 flower trolleys, equaling conventional reefer trailer capacity.

During rail transport of the flora container from Duisburg to Sweden an integrated diesel generator supports active temperature control of the plants. The container is equipped with real-time tracking and temperature monitoring.

The flora container allows plants and flowers to be transported in a sustainable manner, while guaranteeing a fast lead time, high payload, and cost-efficient pricing. The time between the Netherlands and the southern part of Sweden equals road transport.

The Samskip network has the flexibility to move containers door-to-door between over 30 countries from the United Kingdom and Ireland to Russia, Scandinavia, Poland, the Baltic States, Finland and Iceland in the north to Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Greece, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia in Southern and Central Europe.

Samskip offers a wide range of routing options, utilizing road, rail, sea and inland waterways as appropriate to provide the best combination of rate and transit time to suit individual customer requirements and preferences. It has over 13,000 containers at its disposal, ranging from 20ft to 45ft pallet-wide high cube containers including reefers, curtain-siders and flat-racks.