Chandler & Dunn struck Gold at last week’s Grower of the Year awards, in London.
The Kent top-fruit grower, which markets through Worldwide Fruit (WWF), won the Gold Award as Edible Grower of the Year, having also been named Top-Fruit Grower of the Year.
Ian Chandler, who runs the company with cousins Peter and Clive Chandler, said the recognition was reward for the recovering top-fruit industry. “It is very good for top fruit in this country to receive the overall award, after a bit of a demise in recent years,” he told FPJ.
“For Chandler & Dunn, this is the culmination of the efforts of a lot of people. We are certainly having a much better season this year than last, when we lost five coldstores of fruit to Boggy Bank. This season, we have managed to keep it at bay by modifying our spraying and marketing the fruit a bit earlier.”
WWF said the awards are “recognition for both the excellent quality of C&D’s fruit and the huge amount of work they undertake on behalf of the industry”.