Our Story - JZ Flowers (2025)

Our founder, Jelle Zwemstra, the Flying Dutchman, started bringing flowers and plants from the famous auction in Aalsmeer, Holland to sell to florists in Yorkshire.

Purchasing patterns were changing and Jelle saw the potential for supermarkets to become major flower retailers.

JZ Flowers formed a partnership with the Van Duijn Group, which later became the Dutch Flower Group. Together we opened a pack-house and distribution centre in Hull, East Yorkshire, to meet the growing demands of UK supermarkets.

At the same time, we pioneered wholesale British-grown Daffodils to the UK and European markets, and open a trading office in Spalding, Lincolnshire, quickly growing our customer and supplier base.

JZ Flowers continued to grow, becoming one of the UK’s leading producers of floral bouquets for retail consumers, expanding to three sites around Hull.

The business also opened a new 10,000 sq. ft production facility in Naas, Ireland.

We extended JZ Newport with an additional 5,500m² cold storage and production facilities and make further investment to create 12,500m² new production and storage facilities.

We also began an exciting joint venture in the United States alongside our long-standing key supplier in Colombia, initially supplying just 25 stores in Florida.

As part of our strategy to develop stronger connections to growers, we worked with Ethiopian rose supplier Herburg Roses.

We committed to buy their entire crop – some 100m stems per annum – helping us work together to optimise the efficiencies and reliability of the supply chain, as well as quality and varietal selection.

We consolidated production facilities in the UK and Ireland with our DFG sister company SuperFlora.

This helped us to better utilise our contemporary floral packhouses in Newport and Naas. We also created a stronger joint buying team in the Netherlands, combining our sourcing volumes and optimising supply chains.

In January 2023, Dutch Flower Group took a strategic step forward by becoming a shareholder in Nini Herburg Roses — a grower group with over 100 hectares of rose production across sites in Kenya and Ethiopia.

This deepened partnership builds on more than a decade of close collaboration and reflects our shared commitment to vertical integration — strengthening the link between grower and retail customer. By working even more closely with Nini Herburg Roses, we’re helping to secure consistent quality, enhance sustainability, and ensure a more agile, reliable supply chain.

It’s a move that aligns perfectly with our values at JZ Flowers: building long-term partnerships, embracing innovation, and delivering the very best for our customers.