Petal power: Blossoms and battles in Malaysia’s floriculture hubs

MUAR, Johor/CAMERON HIGHLANDS, Pahang – Along the flatlands of coastal Muar, workers are busy fertilising flowering shrubs under an overcast sky. In a matter of weeks, some of these plants from the town in Johor state will wend their way towards Singapore to help beautify the city state’s streets and neighbourhoods.

Nearly 400km northwards, in the cooler climate of Cameron Highlands in Pahang state, rows of chrysanthemum blossoms sitting pretty in plastic-covered greenhouses await harvesting. Many of these will soon journey to Japan, where they will be offered at home altars as a sign of respect for the ancestors.

These two very different hubs – the lowlands of Muar, hot and humid year-round, and the highlands where daily temperatures range from 15 deg C to 25 deg C – quietly form the backbone of Malaysia’s multimillion-dollar floriculture industry.

Malaysia’s floriculture trade has flourished over the years, with its export value peaking at US$121 million (S$156 million) in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic took its toll.

While business is picking up pace again, growers face pressure from labour woes and cheap Chinese blooms – hence, it will take grit as well as green fingers to sustain competitiveness and keep their businesses thriving.

Like fashion, floriculture follows trends – plants fall in and out of style, just like clothes on a runway, mused Mr Johnson Bu, the 56-year-old executive director of Bu Seng Chong Nursery in Muar.

“There is no permanent preference for a species (in floriculture). Like fashion, it changes according to people’s tastes and sensibilities,” he told The Straits Times.

His father, Mr Bu Seng Chong, 77, founded the business bearing his name in the 1970s. One of Malaysia’s floriculture pioneers, the senior Mr Bu began supplying trees and shrubs to landscaping contractors in Singapore as the city state set about transforming itself into a “Garden City”.

In the early days of Singapore, large trees with broad, dense canopies that provided shade from the sun were widely planted. Among them were the towering khaya and the angsana dotted with tiny yellow flowers.

Nowadays, Singapore clients prefer shorter, flowering trees under 5m and shrubs with colourful leaves. These include the hardy sea dendrolobium (Dendrolobium umbellatum) with its small, white flowers, which is effective at controlling soil erosion and can be planted on beaches and sand dunes to help control erosion; and the striking Indian putat (Barringtonia acutangula) with its drooping clusters of night-blooming, scarlet flowers.

“Most of the Singaporean landscaping contractors came to source from my father. He not only hired more workers but also brought in relatives to join the booming business,” said the younger Mr Bu, who worked as a landscape contractor before joining the family business.

After taking over the business from his father in 1995, he now manages an area spanning over 120ha. He pointed out that the abundant water supply from parit – or water trenches commonly found in the flatlands of Muar – offers a natural advantage for growing flower shrubs and plants.

“Muar, being centrally located between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, allows us to fulfil client orders within just three hours via the North-South Expressway,” he said.

Business is no bed of roses

Malaysia ranks among the world’s top 10 floriculture-exporting countries, said Department of Agriculture (DOA) director-general Nor Sam Alwi. The country’s floriculture exports, which include fresh cut flowers, ornamental plants, shrubs and trees, amounted to US$98.4 million in 2024.

That same year, the top three destinations for floriculture exports from Malaysia were Japan, Australia and Singapore.

In Malaysia, industry growers note that plant sales could serve as a barometer of sorts for how well the property market is doing, since landscaping and greenery improves the overall aesthetics at residential and commercial developments for potential buyers.

Nursery owner Vincent Boo, 32, who is also based in Muar, said his business has kept pace with that of property developments in the capital Kuala Lumpur, which has slowed in 2025 from the pre-pandemic peak in 2019.

“We used to receive regular requests for quotations and landscape plans for Kuala Lumpur projects in 2019. Now, it’s slowed (down) by about 30 per cent,” said Mr Boo, whose Tapak Semaian Sri Maju counts among its clients major property developers like Country Garden, Gamuda and Ecoworld. He is a nephew of the younger Mr Bu.

He sees an upside from the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System Link that is

expected to begin service in December 2026

, as the resulting increase in cross-border travel and boost in economic activities could prove a boon for the property market in JB – and for floriculture businesses.

But labour shortage remains a pressing matter for the industry, which, like many other sectors in Malaysia, relies heavily on foreign manpower.

Currently, Johor faces an estimated 30 per cent to 40 per cent shortage of foreign workers in labour-intensive industries such as floriculture, said the younger Mr Bu, who is also chairman of the Nursery Industry Association of Johor that has 186 members.

“We can’t use machines to prune flowering trees of varying heights across uneven terrain,” he said.

On his 60ha farm, Mr Boo, who employs 120 foreign workers, said he was still short of 50 more.

Although he has tried his best to hire more local workers, the “3D” work, as he calls it – dirty, dangerous and difficult being the nature of the job – with monthly wages between RM1,700 (S$520) and RM2,200, is not attractive to Malaysians. “Locals quit after a day or two. A month without weeding makes the flower plants unsaleable.”

The labour crunch is set to deepen as Malaysia plans to cut the proportion of foreign workers from the current 15 per cent to 10 per cent by 2030 and to 5 per cent by 2035 as part of the 13th Malaysia Plan (2026-2030), aiming to reduce dependency on foreign labour and promote a more high-tech economy.

Climate counts: Growing world-class ‘mums’

While Johor has the largest floriculture area in Malaysia at 39,600ha, its 2023 production value of RM339.55 million is slightly lower than Pahang’s RM383.14 million, despite the latter cultivating less than 10 per cent of Johor’s land area.

The reason for this is the temperate climate in Pahang’s Cameron Highlands, which is ideal for growing premium fresh flowers like roses, orchids and chrysanthemums – or “mums”, as the long-lasting blooms are commonly known.

Malaysia ranks eighth globally in terms of cut flower sales, chalking up an export value of US$77.98 million in 2024. Around 12 per cent of the blooms ended up in Singapore, according to the United Nations Comtrade Database. More than 80 per cent of Malaysia’s cut flower exports are grown in Cameron Highlands, local growers estimate.

Floriculture Association of Cameron Highlands president Lee Peng Fo, 69, said the Highlands-grown “mums” are among the best in the world. “The colours can last up to two weeks after arriving in the destination country, with year-round supply,” he told ST.

Representing 160 members and 60 companies, Mr Lee estimated that 85 per cent of Cameron Highlands’ fresh cut flowers are exported – some 25 per cent goes to Japan, 25 per cent to Thailand and 10 per cent to Singapore.

A dozen stalks of “mums” can fetch RM12 to RM14 wholesale – far more than locally grown vegetables. For instance, brinjal, a common crop grown in Cameron Highlands, sells for just RM1.50 per kg.

Drawn by the higher prices, Mr P. Jegathesen, 63, started growing flowers in 2020 after 30 years as a vegetable farmer.

He recalled once losing RM30,000 from growing brinjal on 2.2ha of land. Since switching to chrysanthemums in 2020, he has earned a stable income comparable to a “public servant’s salary”. But he declined to disclose details.

“Before Covid-19, vegetable prices were good, but now China and Vietnam are beating us. So it’s better to grow chrysanthemums,” said Mr Jegathesen, showing ST eight plots of his white and yellow “mums” ready for harvesting in the coming weeks for the Deepavali celebration in October.

Still, it’s not always rosy, even in the flower business, as grower Eddy Tan well knows.

An influx of cheaper cut flowers from China into the global marketplace in recent years has resulted in popular varieties such as roses and carnations being sold at below Malaysian growers’ cost of production.

“Normally, we wholesale a bundle of 20 roses for RM20 to RM25. But with China aggressively pushing into overseas markets, prices can drop as low as RM10 per bundle – below our production cost,” the 32-year-old director of Xin Chang Chun Flowers told ST.

In response, Mr Tan has taken to planting chilli on half of his 8.09ha farm in a bid for better returns.

The Floriculture Association of Cameron Highlands’ Mr Lee acknowledged that mounting competition from China has displaced Malaysia’s once-dominant rose and carnation plantations.

Back in 2019, China exported cut flowers totalling about US$6 million more than Malaysia. By 2024, that difference was around US$100 million, according to UN Comtrade’s data.

The widening spread has not gone unnoticed.

Datuk Nor Sam of the DOA said floriculture remains a high-value, key contributor to the country.

“To ensure Malaysia’s floriculture products are recognised and remain competitive internationally, the DOA continues to strengthen market access through negotiations with importing countries, compliance with phytosanitary requirements, quality certification and promotion at both domestic and international levels,” she told ST.

Meanwhile, Mr Ho Chi Yang, a state assemblyman in Cameron Highlands, has urged the relevant agencies to help growers expand their sales overseas.

Industry trends should be better tracked to assess supply and demand for export markets, he told ST, adding: “We need to prepare a database to compare chrysanthemums and roses grown in Cameron Highlands with the same species from China and Vietnam. This will help us support farmers by highlighting our unique specialities.”