Amos Orr

Amos Orr

Agrexco, the largest exporter of fruit, vegetables and flowers from Israel, has registered a 25 per cent increase in its UK turnover in the last 12 months.

The Agrexco year ends on September 30 and the company’s UK general manager Amos Orr told the Journal that UK sales topped £97 million, in a year that saw huge increases in volume across all of the grower-owned co-operative’s main lines.

Total Agrexco sales rose by 10 per cent year-on-year, to £379m, and Orr said the UK office was at last living up to its “enormous potential”. He said: “In the past, we haven’t quite used the potential of this office. We had big volumes available to us in the last year and I don’t know if we’ve reached our potential now - but we have certainly showed what is possible.”

The record results are extremely impressive in a trading environment that most companies have found a struggle. Israeli growers have benefited both from consistently fine weather at home, and the vagaries of the climate in several competing production sources.

They now stand to benefit from significantly increased returns. Agrexco accounts for around 75 per cent of Israeli agricultural exports, according to Orr, who picked out potatoes (up 50 per cent), peppers (up 52 per cent), cherry tomatoes, which trebled in volume, citrus and avocados as star performers last season.

Big strides are also being made in high-value lines such as herbs and strawberries and Orr expects volumes destined for the UK to increase again in the next 12 months.