For Atlanta Airport Warehouser, Valentine's Day is Always Rosy

Sometimes Tim Holt can just look around his chilly, cavernous warehouse and tell what time of the year it is.

Blueberries --- that would be April or May. Grapes --- May or June. Asparagus --- September through December.

And roses and tulips --- well, that would be now. As Valentine's Day approaches, the volume of flowers moving through Holt's temperature-controlled warehouse at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport blossoms.

"You get pretty much everything, every kind of flower for Mother's Day," said Holt, vice president of operations and marketing for Perishables Group International. "But Valentine's Day is pretty much roses and tulips."

The perishables warehouse is one of the great behind-the-scenes operations at the world's busiest airport. In the run-up to Valentine's Day, it handles up to 3,000 boxes of roses every week. Every box has up to 10 bunches that contain up to 25 flowers each.

Holt said flower volume jumps as much as 60 percent this time of year at the warehouse, where the flower shipments are inspected by federal officials before being doled out to wholesalers.

The flowers arrive from places such as Ecuador, Colombia, Holland, South Africa and Costa Rica. They eventually fill retail outlets across the region.

"Some of the ones in here make it all the way to Greenville, S.C.," Holt said. "Some others I know of are headed to 15 or so high-end florist shops in Buckhead."

Holt's 40,000-square-foot warehouse --- temperatures range from 55 degrees to 5 below zero --- stores a lot more than cut flowers for Cupid's holiday.

It ranks third in the nation for the number of propagated plants it handles each month, behind airport warehouses in Miami and Los Angeles. Last month, it handled 9 million cuttings, which are shipped to nurseries and eventually sold to homeowners at retail outlets.

The warehouse also stores perishable medicines and even fish --- and occasionally more exotic items.

"We get animal trophies sometimes," he said. "We've had monkey heads a long, long time ago."

More recently, Holt recalled, federal officials stored cheese that was seized from passengers flying into Hartsfield-Jackson from Mexico. About 30,000 pounds were seized in a single month, he said. "People were bringing in suitcases of this stuff," he said. "People said it was for personal consumption, but you do the math. A suitcase full of cheese is a lot of cheese."

News stories provided by third parties are not edited by "Site Publication" staff. For suggestions and comments, please click the Contact link at the bottom of this page.