Florette hopes to source nearly half of its lamb’s lettuce from the UK on the back of a major expansion in protected growing in Essex.
Last year the bagged-salad giant established a joint venture known as Angflor with East Anglia grower Jepco, initially producing lamb’s lettuce and other popular baby leaf varieties on 11ha of protected land.
This week work began on constructing a further 9ha of tunnels at a cost of some £2.3 million, with a planning application set to go in for 20ha more.
The total 40ha would supply nearly 40 per cent of Florette’s needs on product lines that were previously difficult to grow in the UK in commercial volumes, according to Florette managing director Neil Sanderson. Rocket, ruby chard and new leaf PepperCress are also being grown at the site.
Patrick Bastow, managing director of Angflor, said: “Due to the UK climate, babyleaf salad can usually only be grown during the summer months, so this development heralds significant changes for the UK grower industry. Last year, Florette identified that climate change was the key challenge facing UK salad growers, with changeable weather patterns and rainfall levels impacting upon their businesses. The development of Angflor therefore provides confidence to growers that there is a bright and sustainable future ahead for horticulture in this country.”
As well as bolstering its UK growing operation, Florette is also investing in 50ha of protected cropping in Spain, Sanderson revealed at a media tour of the Angflor site this week.
Sanderson explained that Florette was making the investment now for a number of reasons, including fears over the lack of new growers coming into the UK industry, the need to build long-term relationships throughout the supply chain, concerns over increasingly unstable weather conditions and the need to take a ‘field-to-bag’ approach to its business.
“The vision that drives our category-leading business forward is to be the hallmark of the freshest and finest-quality products, so it is vital that our grower network is as efficient and sustainable as possible to ensure that we can deliver this superior freshness and quality 100 per cent of the time,” he added.
See Inside Angflor, a tour of the Essex production facility, in FPJ 25 July.
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