The 2011 British strawberry season will see soft fruit supplier BerryWorld focus its marketing support around one of its newer varieties, Sweet Eve.
BerryWorld’s growers will produce more than 6,000 tonnes of Sweet Eve for The Co-operative, M&S, Tesco and Waitrose in 2011 on farms from Retford in the north to Camelford in the south west.- a year on year increase of more 300 per cent.
An everbearer variety, Sweet Eve will be available from early July through to the end of September. The first Sweet Eve berries will arrive on supermarket shelves in June.
Following assessment of more than 50,000 individual seedlings over five years, plant breeder Peter Vinson selected Sweet Eve. BerryWorld has decided that future production of its everbearers should be focussed on this variety.
BerryWorld has 12 large growers across the UK who will be producing Sweet Eve throughout the season. It accounts for 30 per cent of soft fruit supplies to UK into multiple retailers, selling over 30,000 tonnes of berries annually, with a turnover in excess of £160 million.
Adam Olins, managing director of BerryWorld, said: “Our decision to focus on Sweet Eve has been prompted by the superior quality of the fruit and its performance in benchmarking assessments. Sweet Eve has been developed specifically for our climate and our wholesale move to this variety is backed by confidence from retailers. In 2010 benchmarking trials Sweet Eve consistently outperformed competitors, and even some premium varieties.”
Sweet Eve was first available in the UK in 2009 in small quantities.
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