Growing partnership with Sainsbury's
AC Goatham opens new facilities
The facility will support the partnership’s drive to increase the volume of high quality home grown fruit available to the British public. By reducing waste, food miles and improving efficiencies it will also be supporting British farmers by putting more money back in their pockets to invest in the future while reducing the environmental impact of fruit farming. AC Goatham believe that there is a bright future for fruit production in the UK, through investment in new varieties, the development of new growing systems and the investment in extensive trials they are working to ensure that there is a greater variety of home grown fruits available for more of the year. On farm trials have been evaluating twelve new apple and pear varieties, ensuring that there are English apples and pears that will stretch the availability of home grown fruits from August through to May and even June every year.
Dr Theresa Huxley, Product Technologist at Sainsbury’s said: “As part of my role we have worked with growers including A C Goatham to drive efficiency and increase productivity of British apple and pear crops. We need to embrace change and continue to improve production and storage techniques so we can continue to meet our customers needs and offer them the best range of fresh tasty British grown product produced with minimal impact on environmental resources. Being involved in the opening of Flanders Farm comes as an example of our clear commitment to British farming and maintaining valued partnerships with our suppliers.
Through this partnership we have seen innovation such as the development and introduction of Zari apple. I am looking forward to this state of the art packing distribution centre making a key difference to the forthcoming season and further down the line towards our 20x20 sustainability plan.”
Justin King, CEO of Sainsbury’s, said: “I’m delighted to take part in the opening, particularly coming after a couple of challenging seasons for British growers. We already offer our customers the widest range of English grown apples and pears with 64 British grown varieties throughout the season, which means we have fresh British fruit for the majority of the year and this new facility will help to extend the season even further."
“Building on our 10 year partnership with A C Goatham, this is a great step for the apple industry and for our customers who will see more British fruit on shelves. Looking forward, we have committed to double sales of British food by 2020 as part of our 20x20 Sustainability Plan, and we expect this site to play a key part in helping us meet this target.”
The Flanders farm site is capable of packing at high speed and employs the latest in fruit management and assessment technology. “Not only can our dessert fruit grader pack at 17.5 tonnes per hour at full capacity, it can also check for internal defects” said Ross Goatham who was project manager for this important move for the company “in varieties such as Braeburn and Bramley which are prone to internal issues late in the season there is a risk of a high level of waste as the season progresses. This means a loss for the grower and we let our customers down, with the new Maf Roda internal assessment system we can offer our fruit with absolute confidence to our retail partners whilst doing the very best we can for our partner growers”
The total investment in the new facility has been £9m, £1.9m of which came in the form of a Defra grant from the rural development fund. AC Goatham are expected to supply somewhere in the region of 200m apples this season to Sainsbury's alone and the future has a target of 50,000t of fruit from the business by 2020.
