41,444 kgs of marigolds sent from Bengaluru airport to Dubai make Guinness record

Nov 29, 2019: Bengaluru Airport sent 41,444 kgs of marigold flowers sourced from various parts of Bengaluru and surrounding districts to Dubai for a festival on November 22. The fresh flowers were laid out at ‘Flowers of Tolerance’ at the Dubai Festival City and have now entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest natural flower carpet in the world.

The consignment of fresh flowers was handled by DHL Global Forwarding on a chartered Boeing 777 Freighter. The freshly-harvested flower consignment was managed by Air India SATS CoolPort to ensure maximum freshness and longer shelf-life of the marigolds. The marigolds were picked from various parts of Bengaluru and districts including Devanahalli and Chikaballapur.

Over the last few years, the BLR Airport has witnessed a huge growth in flower exports due to the availability of an effective CoolPort, equipped with temperature monitoring and cold rooms, with varied temperatures to handle commodities with different requirements. The dedicated cold chain facility at BLR Airport handles the seamless movement of perishable cargo. The state-of-the-art infrastructure ensures that the temperature is maintained not only in storage, but also in the pre-loading area, right up to the time the cargo is loaded onto the aircraft.

Recently, Bengaluru Airport sent out a record 5,620 tonnes of fresh leaves of coriander between July and September 2019, a 70 percent growth over the same period last year. The leaves are used extensively in Indian cuisine, and were transported to 13 states in India and internationally to Sri Lanka.