Berry Gardens has reported its best-ever period of strawberry sales as the balmy weather drives consumption.
Despite the latest-ever start to the season, the marketer has sold over 1,700 tonnes of strawberries to supermarkets over the past three weeks, managing director Nick Marston told a media briefing at Fruit Focus this week.
“The cool and dull spring weather this year created an unprecedented delay to the start of the season, which, as British Summer Fruits has already extensively reported, created bigger fruits that have had higher than average sugar levels,” Marston said. “When the crops finally start to ripen, a lot of fruit came very quickly. Fortunately we had anticipated this situation and sales plans were prepared to reflect the later, bigger crops.”
Growers have also been boosted by improved sales figures, with Kantar data for the last four weeks showing values rising 15.8 per cent against last year and volumes up 28.9 per cent.
There’s a similarly rosy picture on the also-delayed raspberry crop, with several weeks of highest-ever sales, Marston reported. Some 400t were sold to supermarkets in the week commencing 14 July, with Driscoll’s Maravilla making up the majority of Berry Gardens growers' crop.
Marston also gave an update on the new varieties of soft fruit coming through. The company is introducing Driscoll’s Solero to Tesco this year, a new Junebearer that has proved to be high yielding but with good flavour.
Growers have increased production of Driscoll’s Diamond for exclusive sale to Marks & Spencer, while two further new Driscoll’s varieties are being introduced in this everbearing season, Scarlet and Serena.
Scarlet is a high-yielding, disease-tolerant variety with better flavour scores than most everbearers, while Serena is a late everbearer with good eating quality and high yield potential.
Other new raspberries include Carmina and Margarita, both from the Driscoll’s programme.
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