The nutritional requirements of soft fruit have changed dramatically in the last two years, according to Hortifeeds’ managing director, Daniel Wilkinson. There has been an increasing interest among growers in the concept of electrical conductivity (EC) feeding, which constitutes the continual fertigation of soil-based crops, he explains. “The EC indicates the level of dissolved solids or nutrients in solution. The growers have been trying to raise the EC levels and so are pumping more and more fertiliser through to raise yields and ensure the fruit is firm rather than too soft from over-watering. Higher EC levels encourage firmer and more class one fruit.”
Hortifeeds’ technical consultant Dennis Wilson says experiments using constant EC feeding over the past few years have found quality problems to be greatly reduced while yield and fruit size have significantly increased. “Traditionally, most soil-grown crops have been fed on an intermittent basis - once or twice a week - and given a set dose of fertiliser per cropped hectare, for example, 25kg per ha a week,” says Wilson.
“While this approach allows a controlled amount of fertiliser to be applied throughout the season, the EC levels of the feed and soil fluctuate significantly according to water use and frequency of application. This can result in low EC soil levels, particularly at harvest time due to flushing of fertiliser following large doses of plain water.”
In theory, this move towards increasing solution levels is distinctly positive for Hortifeeds, says Wilkinson, but the positive affect on sales has been somewhat tempered by the ongoing financial problems affecting growers. “The increase in feed is obviously good for us, but at the same time, because a lot of growers had a bad year last year, one effect for some has been the move away from bespoke products to providing their own by taking all the raw ingredients that we provide and putting them together themselves.”
However, this has not always been a viable solution in the long run, he explains. “It is a false economy because it requires a lot more time and generally needs to be done by the top men because the majority of the farm workers are not suitably trained to get it right and they also have to stock eight or nine products instead of just one. We have found that growers quite often do it for a year and then come back to having a bespoke service.”
With such an unstable marketplace for fresh produce, the cost of producing tailor-made products is a constant challenge, he claims. “Providing a high level of service demands a premium but as the market conditions get tougher it gets harder for producers to justify the expense. In a good year when prices are up, confidence is up and it can all change overnight.” Just like the producers, Hortifeeds’ sales and profits depend on the weather, which is beyond anyone’s estimation, he says.
In addition, compliance with the increasingly stringent health and safety legislations takes its toll, Wilkinson claims. “We are constantly analysing the cost implications of legislation and insurance premiums. We aim to be as flexible as possible but the possibility of a liability claim restricts us greatly in the level of service we can give. It gets harder and harder every year.”
Packaging legislations are a further concern. “CHIP 3 regulations govern how we transport goods and how they are labelled and packaged,” says Wilkinson. “Several of our products may now fall outside these regulations. The cost of transport is going up and we have to change the packing and labelling and make sure all the carriers are certified.”
Not only is the process expensive but highly restrictive as well, he continues. “This has an impact on our ability to react to a customer’s demands. For example, if a customer rings up having run out of feed for some reason we can usually respond and get something out to him quickly, but, because of this legislation, it is limiting our ability to react like this if we have to find a certain carrier which is certified to take the product. These restrictions are coming in all the time, which is a constant battle for us.”
With soft-fruit producers making the decision to grow in substrate, or to a lesser extent peat, both the nutrients required and the methods of delivery have steadily developed. “With more inert growing media, the growers are needing to put more and more nutrients down the irrigation channel,” says Wilkinson. “Growers are able to control the growth more and more, to produce better yields and at different times to extend the harvest period throughout the year.”
Being able to manipulate the feed has an impact on the amount required as well as the type of feed being used. “Ten years ago if you were growing strawberries, it was commonplace to use cheap agricultural fertiliser. Today everything going through the irrigation line is high quality, high solubility NPK fertiliser with high levels of secondary and trace elements,” he says.
Hortifeeds, the horticultural division of Lincoln-based company Nutrel Products, was formed in 1993 by Wilkinson’s father, John. After many years of experience in distributing trace elements for use by the larger agricultural farms in Lincolnshire, John established his own company. The Nutrel group has since expanded in several different directions of which horticulture now plays a prominent part, according to its current md.
“We had experience formulating other people’s products and decided to do it ourselves,” says Wilkinson. “Because we felt the existing network of horticultural distribution unable to cope with the high level of expertise and service that we wanted to offer, we decided to go direct, which was unheard of at the time. We have since built it up to form a larger share of the business. Hortifeeds is the fastest growing sector of the business which is a result of the bespoke products that we do, backed up with a high level of technical experience.”
According to Wilkinson the business has been expanding by around 15 per cent year on year and last year enjoyed a turnover of £4 million, employing a staff of 35. “We have a very strong position in terms of soft fruit. We have built up a good reputation for providing quality service with a large number of growers. We provide their nutritional needs through Hortifeeds and other names as well.”
While the company prides itself on always looking to the future, the possibilities for product development are fairly limited, Wilkinson says. “It is difficult to invent new chemicals,” he says. “The basic product is still NPK but there are new ways of applying it, different forms of putting it down the irrigation line, and we put a lot of work into making it easier for the growers. For example, one grower is using 15 different types of a bespoke product, prepared to different levels. They are exact formulations for different times, so that he uses a different level to start the crop from when it is fruiting, for instance, and all he has to do is open a stop tap and feed it down the line.”
Hortifeeds also provides niche products to stimulate and improve the health of different crops. The raw ingredients which are not naturally present in the UK are imported from all over the world and assembled at the company’s 8.5 acre site.
While business continues to develop in the UK, Wilkinson says Hortifeeds will be looking to expand relations with customers further afield in the future. “We are going to get to a stage where we have saturated the UK market and will expand our interest abroad,” Wilkinson concludes. “Last year around 25 per cent of our business was taken up with exports to northern European countries such as Germany, Sweden, France and Holland. We haven’t had a cohesive export strategy in the past couple of years but we have just hired a new salesman with experience of the Middle Eastern market and we will be looking to develop the export side of the business in that region.”
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