A joint venture agreement between Fresca Group and three Dutch salad crop growers heralds the opening of the UK’s biggest ever glasshouse development.
In a move that Fresca believes will revolutionise the UK’s supply of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, a 91-hectare site in north Kent has now been officially recognised as Thanet Earth, a project that will accommodate seven eight-metre high glasshouses, each with an average size of over seven hectares - the equivalent of covering 75 football pitches with glass.
Fresca estimates Thanet Earth will add an extra 15 per cent to UK production levels as they stand. The firm has signed partnership contracts with three independent Dutch growers in a bid to create the country’s largest salad growing and marketing company - Rainbow Growers, the Netherlands’ largest Dutch pepper growing group, tomato producer Red Star Growers, owned by Cor and Dirk van der Kaaij, and cucumber specialist A&A.
The site is now taking shape, and the first glasshouses are scheduled for construction in March 2008. The first commercial crops from the scheme are due to hit retail shelves in autumn 2008.
Once production kicks off, Steve McVickers will become managing director of the new marketing company, which works on a joint venture business model, giving the growers a collective 50 per cent stake. He has an extensive background in the salad business and was closely involved in bringing Fresca and the growers together.
“The industry continues to evolve for everyone in the supply chain, with both producer and customer now insisting on a much closer relationship,” he said. “A structure to extend the grower’s role further up the supply chain has been long overdue, so our joint venture is a great formula as it increases the grower’s market understanding, helps tailor product and planning and rewards him on the total success of the business.
“Thanet Earth will be a beacon supplier, demonstrating how flexible a grower can be to enable him to meet his customer needs.”
Wim Grootscholten, Rainbow Growers group chairman, said: “Our relationship with Fresca stretches back over many years, so we knew it would provide the perfect expansion opportunity. We also knew we were working with a partner we could trust. Thanet Earth is the perfect development for us […] I think we’ve got a winning formula.”
Fresca Group chairman Chris Mack is delighted with the commitment of the team that has put the project together. “I doubt there’s any other company that would have had the resources, the ambition, the persistence and the vision to make Thanet Earth more than an idea,” he commented. “It’s taken a committed team over two years to turn the idea into a reality; their planning and attention to detail has made this development the most significant thing to happen to the UK salad industry for years. We’re extremely pleased with the prospects for the site and the considerable diversity this venture brings to our group.”
The site will harvest 52 weeks a year, with crops grown under lights using what the firm believes will be the largest horticultural Combined Heat & Power (CHP) installation in the country. CHP couples the generation of electricity for sale to the National Grid, with the benefit of also producing by-products needed for greenhouse production. Thanet Earth will use these to replace conventional energy usage to heat the greenhouses, and provide the CO2 required by the plants.
Product handling will be fully automated from plant to dispatch in the on-site packhouse, which in itself looks set to cover more than 30,000sqm.
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