VIBRANT STRAWBERRY WINS AWARD
12th March 2012
Vibrant, the new early strawberry variety bred at East Malling Research in Kent by Dr David Simpson and his team, has won best new entry
in the edibles section at the recent Grower of the Year Awards 2012.
Hargreaves Plants has taken a significant role in the propagation of this variety for both bare rooted plants and plug plants for July/August delivery.
Vibrant should perform well as a misted tip plant for people as it's naturally very early and the misted tip plant should encourage it to produce up to 5 days earlier the year after planting.
Commenting on the variety Giz Gaskin, Product Sector Manager at Hargreaves Plants said "This early variety is exceptionally well flavoured with good colour and a high percentage of class 1. An ideal opportunity for growers to get quality fruit into the market early."
Further information on Vibrant is available at www.vibrantstrawberry.com
EARLY LIFTING OF ASPARAGUS CROWNS
7th March 2012
Asparagus crown lifting at Hargreaves has started earlier than usual this year. Ideal soil conditions have meant that some growers are looking to plant early, and as a result the company started digging at the end of February.
Product manager for the crop, Vincent Dupré stated, "We have been lifting Mondeo crowns for over a week now and we are very pleased with the plant quality. We made a number of changes to our growing techniques this season, and the results have been borne out with our largest crown crop yet."
The two main varieties in the Hargreaves range are Mondeo and Guelph Millennium. These were initially selected in the company's world leading variety trials, and are now fully fledged commercial varieties in the UK.
For further information on these two varieties, take a look at the following websites:
REUBEN BLACKBERRY
13th February 2012
Reuben blackberry continues to go from strength to strength. Already well established as the leading primocane blackberry in Europe, Reuben has now been officially recognised by both the professional fruit growing and home garden industries.
Reuben was named as best new blackberry at the recent International Produce Awards, held at The Belfry. International Produce is a produce supply company wholly owned by Asda/Walmart. This award was official recognition for Reuben, which is now thought to be the most widely grown primocane blackberry for the fresh fruit market within Europe.
Reuben blackberry has its own variety domains in English and Spanish. Take a look at www.reubenblackberry.com or www.reubenmora.com .
Further, Reuben was nominated for the Colour-Your-Life award at the prestigious IPM show in Essen, Germany. This show is recognised within Europe as being the most important exhibition for the overall home garden sector. For more information on this particular nomination, take a look at the following link:
Jamie Petchell, Commercial Director of Hargreaves Plants, stated "We are very pleased with the progress made by Reuben for both the fresh fruit and home garden markets. We originally selected it in 2006 and now that larger scale trials have been completed, plant sales are taking off. You can see a YouTube video about Reuben on the following link: www.bit.ly/reubenvideo "
Hargreaves Plants is scaling up the plant production of Reuben to meet the increased market demand.
HARGREAVES PLANTS TRADE MARK REGISTRATIONS
10th February 2012
As a company Hargreaves Plants fully understands the value of Intellectual Property and branding. As a result to we are pleased to confirm that the names Hargreaves® and our Social Media brands on Facebook and Twitter: Berrybuddies® and Asparabuddies® are now wholly owned Trade Marks of Hargreaves Plants.
“These names are all very well known internationally in their specific fields and as a result protecting them and gaining more value from them is crucial“explained Jamie Petchell, Commercial Director of Hargreaves Plants.
Berrybuddies Asparabuddies
www.facebook.com/berrybuddies www.facebook.com/asparabuddies
www.twitter.com/berrybuddies www.twitter.com/asparabuddies
- @berrybuddies - @asparabuddies
HARGREAVES APPOINTS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGER
18th January 2012
Dr Sue Williams has been appointed as Intellectual Property Manager within our organisation. Sue has a great depth of experience in IP management, historically involved with the British Society of Plant Breeders (BSPB) and in more recent times as UK General Manager of a seed potato breeding company.
Commenting on the appointment, Rupert Hargreaves said " This is a great strategic move for the company. We have one of the very best IP portfolios for berries and asparagus in the world. Bringing Sue's IP and marketing skills into the business is going to be a great asset to our company, the breeders we represent, and to our IP customers"
FRESH INSPIRATIONS CONFERENCE 2012
Hargreaves Plants is very passionate about training and development of people within the business. In 2011 the company won the Lincolnshire and Rutland Skills Award for medium sized businesses for its ongoing commitment to staff training and apprenticeship schemes.
We understand that the key element to the future success and growth of our business will be determined by attracting more talent to our company and our industry.
With this in mind, Rupert Hargreaves is delighted to be involved as a mentor at the Fresh Inspirations Conference on 26th January 2012 in Huntingdon.
We would urge young people aspiring to develop a career in horticulture or fresh produce to attend this first class conference. It promises to be very though provoking, challenging and the perfect opportunity to gain a further insight into our hugely exciting industry.
Book your place online via:
http://www.onepageprofile.co.uk/people/FreshInspirations/
HARGREAVES PLANTS EMPLOYS ASPARAGUS PRODUCT MANAGER
Hargreaves Plants has recently employed Vincent Dupré to work within the company's asparagus business. Vincent will spend his initial eight weeks working around the business to understand the crops and operations.
He has a Masters Degree in crop production and speaks both Dutch and German as native languages, as well as fluent English. Vincent's appointment comes at a time when Hargreaves Plants is expanding its own asparagus crown production up to 8 million units. This has followed on the back of significant varietal development within the company's portfolio of material.
Vincent will be working concurrently to develop Hargreaves' overseas presence in asparagus and in the UK as its market share increases.
HARGREAVES PLANTS AND BERRY BUDDIES
#UNDERSTANDINGBLACKBERRIES
7th November 2011
Hargreaves Plants and its social media guise 'Berry Buddies' recently hosted the #UnderstandingBlackberries event at The Orangery, New Covent Garden Market. The occasion was an industry first for berries in that it combined major players from the berry industry with key influencers in the consumer area. Carol Ford of Growing Direct (www.growingdirect.org) and Dominic Weaver of Red Communications (www.redcomm.co.uk) assisted in the organisation of the evening.
There were four excellent speakers; Jane Fairlie of Hargreaves Plants, Prof. John Clark of the University of Arkansas, Peter Seabrook of The Sun newspaper and Andy Jackson of International Produce/Asda. These were followed by excellent cookery workshops from Vickie Humber of Humbers Homemade and Jose Souto of Westminster Kingsway College.
The event demonstrated the differences between dessert blackberries like Ouachita or Reuben and culinary types such as Loch Ness and Chester. In addition, there was discussion on how to get children involved in growing blackberries and how to grow the blackberry market in general.
The feedback both on the day and subsequently suggests that it was considered a real success. For more information on better eating blackberries, take a look at the following:
and also:
www.youtube.com/hargreavesplants
To keep up with the latest up to the minute #blackberry developments in social media, these are the places to visit:
HARGREAVES PLANTS PURCHASE NURSERY SITE
16th September 2011
R. A. Meredith are pleased to confirm the sale of its Huntingdon nursery to Hargreaves Plants. This has followed from a review of its activities and the decision to rationalise operations to improve the business’ geographical efficiency.
This is the first of a number of moves to counter the rising costs that all growers are facing at the moment in the ornamental horticultural industry.
Commenting on the purchase Rupert Hargreaves said “This a great, strategic move for our soft fruit plant business where we are expanding our market share significantly. The 18 acre Huntingdon nursery will allow us to take the full advantage of our products and the market place. We will now have the facilities to offer our customers a product that will be unequalled in our sector of the market.”
UK ASPARAGUS NOW AVAILABLE IN THE AUTUMN
14th September 2011
Cobrey Farms, the UK's largest asparagus growers have recently broken the boundaries of what was thought possible in asparagus production. They have just started to harvest their first ever crop of autumn produced UK asparagus. For a crop that is traditionally harvested during May and June, this is a huge breakthrough.
It is culminating of 6 years research and development that involved a high degree of travelling to important asparagus growing nations worldwide. Hargreaves Plants was involved in this work from a variety development standpoint.
John Chinn, the managing partner of Cobrey Farms commented, "This has been a very important advancement, not just for our business but for UK asparagus production overall. I would like to thank Hargreaves Plants for their help in development of this project. The product we are harvesting is much fresher than the imported spears found on the shelves at present, and as a result, the consumer is provided with a better eating experience. The product is being sold by leading M & S stores throughout the UK."
To see an interview with John Chinn discussing the new asparagus crop, visit:
SOUTH KOREA
5th September 2011
Hargreaves Plants have signed a Memorandum of Union agreement with Daekunrung Horticultural and Agricultural Co-operative Assocation to trial our strawberry and raspberry varieties in South Korea.
South Korea produces approximately 7500 hectares of strawberries. The development work between our two companies is very exciting and is expected to achieve great opportunities for the future.
Featured in the photo are Mr Park, Byung Seung - President of Daekunrung Horticultural and Agricultural Co-operative Association and Mr Rupert Hargreaves - Managing Director of Hargreaves Plants.
FRUIT FOCUS
20th July 2011
Hargreaves Plants launched 2 new strawberries at Fruit Focus 2011 in East Malling Kent.
Visitors were able to see both Serenity and Buddy at various stages of production as part of the farm tours.
Serenity is a late season variety bred at East Malling and marketed exclusively through Hargreaves Plants. This is a late season Florence somaclone and was selected as it is significantly lighter in colour than Florence while retaining all other positive attributes.
Buddy is an everbearer variety, again bred at East malling and exclusive to Hargreaves Plants. Buddy has been selected for its berry quality, particularly in terms of exceptional flavour and appearance.
Adam Whitehouse, manager of East Malling Strawberry Breeding Club conducted the tours and gave visitors a technical and informative view on both varieties.
"Both varieties have huge potential, Serenity fills a gap in the season for growers and retailers alike which is currently wide open. Buddy is a very high quality everbearer variety that is expected to attract premium brand interest" commented Rupert Hargreaves.
As part of the marketing campaign, both varieties have been supported with their own bespoke websites; www.serenitystrawberry.com, www.buddystrawberry.com. Both of these websites contribute to Hargreaves Plants positioning themselves at the forefront of web based variety information.
GUELPH MILLENNIUM
24th June 2011
The exceptionally early start to the UK asparagus season this year is meaning that many growers are shutting down their fields earlier than normal. This is in order to restore energy to the crowns for next year's crop.
However, these growers with well established crops of the hybrid Guelph Millennium are finding that it is truly performing at its best during the latter part of the season. As a result, asparagus producers are able to reap the benefits of high quality spears producing when standard types have all but finished.
Guelph Millennium, bred in Canada and offered as crowns exclusively by Hargreaves Plants has been cultivated in the UK for 10 years now. Jamie Petchell, Commercial Director of Hargreaves Plants stated, 'Millennium has always produced well in June and this ability really manifests itself to the fore in a season like 2011. There is an overall lack of asparagus on the market at the moment, so Millennium offers a real tangible benefit to growers and customers alike.'
Marie-Laure Bayard, Asparagus technical Manager for Hargreaves commented, 'As well as being a later producing cultivar, Millennium offers significant quality advantages over the industry standard types. Very high daily harvested yields reduce picking costs and superior head quality coupled with excellent spear straightness mean that the marketable percentage is greater than any other named variety we are testing.'
Petchell concluded, 'Bringing new asparagus varieties onto the market is by its very nature a long process. For example the limiting factor to date with Millennium has been seed availability. As such we estimate that the variety currently accounts for approximately 10% of the UK asparagus acreage. However we are working to improve the seed supply situation and the superb attributes of Millennium will see this figure rise dramatically in the next 5 years.'
OPEN FARM SUNDAY
16th June 2011
Hargreaves Plants were very pleased to join a further 450 leading farming companies in the UK and take part in the national initiative Open Farm Sunday. We hosted this at Church Farm, Hillington, Norfolk. This is a new 1000 acre farm at which Hargreaves Plants are growing a large area of strawberry plants, raspberry canes and asparagus plants. Visitors were able to see the pedigree Beef Shorthorn, modern farm machinery and also take tractor and trailer rides around the farm where crop experts from Hargreaves were on hand to talk through the various crops.
The day was extremely busy and well received by the local community. This is an extremely good initiative by LEAF (www.leafuk.org) who have done a great job to co-ordinate the annual open day, it's a fantastic initiative.
ASPARAGUS VARIETY TRIALS
Update 30th May 2011
Cutting finished this year on the Hargreaves Plants asparagus variety trials at the end of May. This is due to the very early start to the season and the fact that the crowns are still young ; they were planted in 2009. This seasons data has shown a number of interesting new selections with real potential to challenge the industry standard types.
Marie-Laure Bayard, the company's technical manager responsible for asparagus stated, " Mondeo and Guelph Millennium have been the real commercial winners from our first trials and my aim is to identify new hybrids that will overtake these in the coming seasons. I am confident that the next generation of green asparagus cultivars is within our trials. Full assessments will take place over the next five years.
For a real insight into the Hargreaves asparagus trials, please have a look at the following YouTube video:
SOFT FRUIT TRIALS
Update 26th May 2011
Hargreaves Plants has this spring invested over £100,000 into its trials of soft fruits. The aim and result of this has been to introduce state of the art new growing systems to match those used in the industry. All strawberry trials are now carried out on table top systems with raspberries and blackberries in coir based substrate, raised off the ground.
Rupert Hargreaves stated "We have been very proud of the work we have done recently to identify and release new varieties. However, for these new releases to be really relevant, they need growing in systems that are widely used within the industry, hence the investment."
To see more of the new fruit trials at Hargreaves Plants, click on the following YouTube link: www.bit.ly/hargreavesberrytrials
ASPARAGUS TRIALS
Update 11th May 2011
Harvesting continues in the Hargreaves Plants asparagus variety trials site. Overall more than 50 hybrids are on test to discover new material predominantly to improve green asparagus production. One outstanding variety that has already been selected is Guelph Millennium. Millennium was bred in Ontario, Canada and is now widely planted across the UK for the benefits it offers in high quality spear production.
Jamie Petchell, the company's commercial director, commented "Now that Millennium is widely grown by UK asparagus producers, we have set up a number of basic agronomy trials to understand how to get the best from it. We are looking at a range of planting depths and their effects on harvest time and spear diameter. In addition, we are experimenting with a wider number of planting densities to be able to deduce the optimum for Millennium asparagus. It will take a number of years for us to establish a final result, but we are already seeing a number of key differences."
HARGREAVES PLANTS WINS SKILLS AND TRAINING AWARD
Update 21st April 2011
Hargreaves Plants has received the Lincolnshire and Rutland Skills Award 2011 for medium Size Business. The award is in recognition of the company's ongoing commitment to staff training and involvement in apprenticeship schemes. Commenting on the award Rupert Hargreaves, MD of Hargreaves Plants, said "This is a great achievement for our company to win the training and skills award. Our company is the largest player in the UK of soft fruit and asparagus plant propagation as well as significant involvements with Research and Development, Intellectual Property Management and Tissue Culture. Hargreaves Plants is enjoying significant growth at the moment both in the UK market and exports. Clearly this growth is only achievable by continued investement in people."
John Hayes MP - Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning commented "It's great to see companies like Hargreaves Plants investing in their people and adding skills to their business. I remain convinced that by taking advantage of government initiatives offered by various training organisations companies like Hargreaves will be in stronger positions to take advantage of their growth opportunities. We applaud their initiative."
NEW FIELD PROPAGATION MANAGER
Update 6th April 2011
Hargreaves Plants is pleased to announce the appointment of Mariusz Padewski (Paddy) to manage the field propagation of soft fruit crops and asparagus plants in Norfolk.
Paddy has had 7 years experience managing one of the UKs larger soft fruit farms growing strawberries, blackberries and blueberries for leading retailers.
Commenting on the appointment Rupert Hargreaves said " We are delighted Paddy has joined our business, he is a well respected grower within the industry and having grown fruit will be well placed to make ongoing improvements to our crops with ever increasing customer demands in mind. This is the first of a number of new key appointments to our ever expanding business."
HARGREAVES PLANTS HOSTING 4TH INTERNATIONAL ASPARAGUS CULTIVAR TRIALS
Update 29th March 2011
Hargreaves Plants has recently been announced as one of ten trial sites to host the 4th International Asparagus Cultivar Trials. Hargreaves has been at the forefront of asparagus testing since planting what were thought to be the world's largest tests in 2004. This new trial contains over 25 cultivars from 8 breeders. These will be established alongside the company's current variety and agronomic screening trials.
The asparagus trials are managed by Marie-Laure Bayard. Marie has been overseeing this part of the business since 2006. She stated " We are very proud to be part of the International Asparagus Cultivar Trials. We are growing plants to be planted in spring 2012. This will allow the first harvest in 2013. It will be very interesting to see how our results compare with those across the globe. It is our ultimate aim to find improved asparagus cultivars."
LEADING THE WAY IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Update 25th March 2011
We are excited to announce we are at the completion of a 3 month project at Hargreaves Plants that is set to take the company to the forefront in social media within the berry business.
Hargreaves Plants has created a brand named Berry Buddies which now has a strong presence on both Twitter and Facebook.
Berry Buddies has been created to allow Hargreaves Plants the opportunity to engage directly with the consumers in such areas as new varieties, garden products and general cultural and industry information.
This work falls in the development and market plans we have associated for our website and is a great way to support our new and constantly improving new varieties coming through from the company.
Watch this website for future developments from Hargreaves Plants.
You can follow Berry Buddies by the following links:
www.onepageprofile/people/berrybuddies or http://bit.ly/Berry_Buddies
TRAINING AWARDS FOR HARGREAVES PLANTS
Update 18th March 2011
Hargreaves Plants were finalists in the Employer of the Year Awards 2011. This was awarded to acknowledge and celebrate employers commitment to the development of their staff and presented by The George Farmer Technology and Language College Apprenticeship Program.
February 2011 saw Hargreaves involved in the Spalding Horticultural Training Group who received recognition for its work from Lantra and Skills Minister John Hayes MP.
Hargreaves Plants has invested in excess of 360 man days into training over the last 12 months.
"We are training people at all levels from basic level plant skills, accounts and customer care, right through to Director training at the Institute of Directors.
We are expanding rapidly now in UK sectors as well as in the export market, this could not be achieved without the right skills in the right places." said Rupert Hargreaves, MD of Hargreaves Plants.