Fresh strawberries can now be added to Irish Christmas menus as a result of a €10 million (£9m) investment by the Keelings Group at its North County Dublin headquarters.
A new glasshouse facility, covering 50,50sqm, will extend the Irish strawberry season into December, with the added bonus of an extra 100 jobs. The investment will enable the group to produce more than 100m strawberries a year - some 6m punnets - giving it a 50 per cent share of the Irish market.
According to the company, which has been in the berry-growing business since the 1940s, the new structures are highly energy efficient, with the carbon dioxide from the burned heating gas returned to the glasshouses and absorbed by the plants.
Rainwater is also captured from the roof of the glasshouse facility and used to irrigate the crop.
The Keelings Group is a family-owned and family-run enterprise, employing some 1,800 staff and with annual sales of around €350m. It claims its primary activities over the last 35 years “have been growing, sourcing, shipping, marketing and distributing fresh produce to Irish, British and European markets”.
Announcing the new investment, one of the group’s managing directors, David Keeling, said: “Traditionally, the strawberry season runs from the beginning of May to the middle of October. Now, through this investment, we have been able to extend the season by another two months and provide fresh strawberries for the Irish market into December.”
Keelings, a major supplier to the multiples, has also been leading the way as a grower. Some time ago, it began cultivating peppers, almost all of which were previously imported. Now it produces 1,500 tonnes a year of green, red and yellow peppers that it claims match the best available on international markets.
For one Keelings’ customer, the new €10m facility was a cause for special celebration. Dublin mother-of-two Natasha Robinson was the winner of a retail competition, organised by the company in conjunction with Tesco, to mark the occasion, and drove off in a new strawberry Mini Cooper, presented by group managing director Caroline Keeling.
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