Bertie Ahern, Ireland’s Taoiseach, has helped launch a new ground breaking pepper growing facility.
Ahern opened the new Keelings glasshouse production site at St Margarets near Dublin.
The €8.2 million project, which will produce more than 1,500 tonnes of peppers each year, has created 50 new jobs and is aimed at reducing Ireland’s dependency on imported peppers.
The company has built around five hectares of glasshouses in a project which it claims is the first of its kind in Ireland.
David Keelings, md of Keelings Farms, said the facility will produce red, green and yellow peppers in a growing area of around 38km.
“We’ve imported all the equipment, growing systems and techniques from Holland and the peppers will be grown on hanging gutters.”
It is estimated that the fresh peppers business in Ireland is worth over
€28m and, until this year, over 95% of peppers were imported to
Ireland.
Keelings aims to be a major source of Irish peppers during the spring,
summer and autumn and Irish consumers now have the choice of buying Irish
grown peppers in their shops.
While the peppers are likely to be priced at a premium, Keelings said there will be a difference: “The advantage with growing our own produce is that they will be at least two days fresher than any imported product coming in from countries like Spain.”
