The UK’s largest producer of soft fruit plants it may be, but Hargreaves Plants is nevertheless mindful that in order to maintain that position it must continue to meet the increasingly stringent demands of commercial growers who themselves are under on-going pressure from the multiples to produce ever-higher quality fruit.
As commercial director Rupert Hargreaves stressed when, in April, the company was granted ISO 9001:2000 accreditation for its strawberry and raspberry plant operations: “Hargreaves Plants simply must continue to provide improved varieties and plants.”
To help achieve this aim, not only in strawberries and raspberries but also in the company’s growing involvement in blueberry and blackberry plants, the vital area of research and development has been expanded and has since February been headed up by a new R&D manager in Jane Fairlie.
Four months on, Fairlie, who had extensive experience in strawberries and raspberries before joining Hargreaves, is relishing the challenge of a job that keeps her in research but at the same time takes her a step closer to the market.
“We’re at an exciting stage of Hargreaves’ development and I’m really enjoying being part of it,” she says. “I’ve spent my first four months here forging relationships with breeders from around the world and getting our trial site up and running.
“I’m obviously involved in the R&D side of the business, but I’m looking at the commercial side too. There’s an opportunity here through the R&D part of Hargreaves to look at new varieties coming in from breeding programmes around the world, to get buyers down to see what’s available for the breeder via us as a vehicle and then see how we can move forward with that.
“The company’s customer base is expanding and part of the reason for that is the micro-propagation lab opened last year. The lab’s business is increasing, which of course adds volume to the business as a whole, and the lab’s work also helps us to move material very quickly from our trial site to the market place.
“We’ve now got over a hundred different selections of strawberry from breeding programmes around the world and close on a hundred selections of raspberry. We’re also looking at blackberries, blueberries, red, white and blackcurrant and we’ve got extensive trials going on.”
Blueberry plants in particular have become a rapidly expanding part of the Hargreaves portfolio. The company confidently expects the UK market to grow considerably and it sees significant opportunities in the EU.
“We’ve moved forward considerably on blueberries in the last four months,” says Fairlie, “to the point where we have a Europe-wide agreement that we can supply the market with blueberry plants from various nurseries and bring new varieties, such as the ones coming out of the US, into the market place.
“We are taking advantage of that situation because we feel there is a place in the market and growers are keen to move to a new fruit that’s got a long shelf-life - and blueberries have got a fantastic shelf-life.
“At the moment strawberry and raspberry plants account for around two-thirds of the company’s turnover and that ratio may not change too much. But the client base is growing all the time and, with blueberry and blackberry plants becoming a fast-growing part of the business, I would say that in volume terms they will bring significantly increasing sales over the coming years.”
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