Coalition moves ahead with promotion order

The development committee of the Floral Marketing Funding Initiative Coalition has agreed on the issues necessary for writing a promotion order. The committee, which consists of major domestic producers and importers, said adoption of a program rests solely on the acceptability of traditional and mass-market channels of distribution for passing along any assessment.

The assessment would be 2 percent on cut flowers and cut greens at the domestic producer and importer level. Any grower or importer whose dollar volume is less than $100,000 would be exempt from the assessment.

Before any program would be initiated, a positive vote of domestic growers and importers would be needed. The initial vote would occur before the program is implemented with a referendum scheduled four years later. The earliest an order could be implemented is 2008.

The development committee is planning to schedule meetings to gather industry input and to discuss the benefits of the program.

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For more: Charles Kremp, Kremp Florist, 220 Davisville Road, Willow Grove, PA 19090; (215) 285-8080; charles@kremp.com; www.kremp.com.