Fresh off the busy Valentine’s Day flower import peak season, Miami International Airport and Brussels Airport (BRU) will host the first-ever Fresh and Flowers Forum on March 9 during the Air Cargo Americas/Supply Chain Americas Show Conference, where experts from both cargo communities will share perishable shipping best practices with conference attendees from around the world.

The Forum will be held on March 9, from 5 – 7 p.m., at the Miami Airport Convention Center, 2nd Floor, Meeting Room 210. 

The Forum will include presentations by U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and leading cargo airlines and logistics providers serving MIA and BRU, as well as panel discussions focused on the efficient handling and trans-shipment of perishables. Panelists will include representatives from: Amerijet; Avianca; DSV Air & Sea; C.H. Robinson; Dnata; Deny Cargo; IFA Skyfast; LATAM Airlines; the Association of Floral Importers of Florida; and Nallian.

The biennial Air Cargo Americas/Supply Chain Americas event is the largest air cargo exhibition in the Western Hemisphere, drawing thousands of aviation and logistics executives from around the world to Miami-Dade County.

MIA and BRU are two regional powerhouses for perishable products, with MIA serving as the busiest cargo gateway for Latin America and the Caribbean, while BRU ranks as one of the leading cargo hubs in Europe. Five freighter airlines currently fly weekly between the two cargo gateways.

MIA handles 70 percent of all perishable imports to the U.S. by air, including 90 percent of all flowers, 69 percent of all fruits and vegetables, and 60 percent of all fish. From January 1 to February 15, MIA expected a total of 1.4 billion flower stems imported for Valentine’s Day, for a 17-percent increase over the same period in 2021.