UK fruit development research body East Malling Trust has announced the planting of a new, 7ha pear orchard with fruit importer AG Thames, which will focus on introducing the Sweet Sensation variety into the country.
The orchard, which has been planted at East Malling Group’s farm in East Malling, Kent, will make use of production methods that have been successfully developed in the Netherlands.
The new orchard, understood to be the largest pear orchard planted in the UK in recent years, consists of nearly 18,886 Sweet Sensation trees, alongside 4,000Conference pear trees as pollinators. AG Thames has the exclusive rights to plant and market the Sweet Sensation pears grown in the UK.
Sweet Sensation is currently being grown in the Netherlands and Belgium, and increasingly around the world in South Africa, Argentina, Italy and Spain.
With Red/blush pears one of the biggest growth area in pears currently, AG Thames believes the red Sweet Sensation variety can benefit from a trend that has already seen other varieties, such as Forelle and Red D’anjou, produce good sales growth over recent years.
The commercial collaboration between the two Kent-based organisations, who have jointly invested around £250,000 in the new project, follows the productive lessons learnt from the AG Thames/Sainsbury’s East Malling Concept Pear Orchard, planted in March 2009.
The Sweet Sensation orchard was officially opened on 24 June by Will Sibley, chairman of East Malling Trust, and Gary Linsell, managing director of AG Thames Fruit. It is anticipated that the first commercial scale crop will hit supermarket shelves in autumn 2012.
Will Sibley said: “This investment shows that, by adopting forward-thinking techniques, there is now commercial confidence in growing pears in Britain.
“The reaction from the industry to the Concept Pear orchard has been very positive and the results from its first harvest have now led AG Thames and ourselves to invest in this much larger orchard with an exciting new variety.”
Linsell added: “An amount of Dutch-grown Sweet Sensation pears are currently sold into the UK during the season. However we believe that the consumer and retail customer would rather buy UK grown fruit in preference to imported.”
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