The Summerfruit Company flew into its second UK soft-fruit season with a champagne and strawberry launch on the spectacular London Eye.
The collaboration between Worldwide Fruit and Redbridge AFI enjoyed a good first year and, said Ian Waller, The Summerfruit Company's 70 growers from Scotland to Cornwall expect a bumper year in 2004.
In total, he said, the company expects to market just over 6,000 tonnes of strawberries and 550t of raspberries this season.
"We started our season on March 10, from Peter Wensak's glasshouses," Waller told the packed pod. "We will have approximately 140 tonnes of strawberries this week, building to 180t next week and 230t the week after. We see the peak of our strawberries coming around June 18 - the last days of Ascot and just before Wimbledon - when we will produce approximately 300t."
The raspberry tonnage is a 20 per cent increase on 2003 and will include new plantings of Octavia and Redeva's new autumn-fruiting variety Brice.
Redeva's Irene Geoghegan said that the soft-fruit breeding programme, which is also in its second full year is producing early results, thanks both to work on its own trial sites and through associations around the world. Italian strawberry varieties Elsinore and Arosa will all be available in commercial volumes this year, as will Elsegarde, while small volumes of Promise will also hit the UK shelves. Clery and Madeleine are being trialed this year, both from the Italian CIV breeding programme. Derek Jennings, who bred Brice for Redeva, has also been instrumental in the placement of several thousand plants of two new UK-bred varieties Nicola and Pamela.
The Redeva team has also been working extensively in Spain, Israel, Egypt and the US, as its constant search for the ideal varieties for the UK market continues.
The Summerfruit Company also marketed more than 2,000t of UK plums last year - 60 per cent of the UK volume - and Waller confidently expects to match that. "We will also market around 70 per cent of the UK cherry crop," he said, "and will have increasing volumes of protected crop over the next two or three seasons.
"We are increasing our production of UK blueberries, meeting an ever-increasing demand, and will continue to offer our customers a full range of currants and blackberries to satisfy consumer needs.
"The Summerfruit Company will continue with its goals to bring growers, customers and consumers closer together, to deliver innovation and a point of difference through the work of Redeva and to give technical support to our growers in order to deliver to the consumer the ultimate eating experience, in both berries and stone fruit," he added.
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