A taste of Cornwall

You do not associate Cornwall as a major strawberry growing area, but AMS is in the process of putting Cornwall on the map.

Approximately eight years ago there was a degree of government funding/grants available to try and stimulate the Cornish economy. Prior to this initiative you only associated Cornwall with beaches, winter cauliflower/greens and those gut busting delicacies called pasties, not forgetting the infamous Cornish clotted cream.

Objective Five B grant funding became available in 1996 and money was made available for tunnel, irrigation and packing facilities, the development was only on a "pocket handkerchief" scale compared to Hereford and Kent but it gave the boost the growers needed. Several growers looked at their annual cropping programme and realised that their slack time was between May/June and also September/October. This gave them the opportunity to spread their labour costs more evenly and to keep them fully employed throughout the year. (Outside of their traditional crops of Winter Cauliflower/greens, early potatoes and early daffodils). With the mild climate this gave them the opportunity to produce some of the very first UK strawberries in the country. Elsanta is, of course, the main player with the majority of production starting in late April and finishing May/early June. A smaller yield comes from July plantings cropping in September and October. 10 degree day and nights are possible throughout the winter months, up to 45 accumulated cold units are needed to make sure the flowers set properly and fruit is not distorted. This would mean several cold days, which we seldom get. Zero accumulated cold units can be seen on some of the groups holdings! So early spring night break lighting is a must and leaving all vents open on cold nights. Most of the group are moving across to table-top production, but some are still traditionally growing in raised soil beds. Soil grown strawberries warm up quicker in the spring and can be ten days earlier into cropping than table top.

The marketing of this fruit in the early days was conducted through Grower Marketing Services, who had a facility in Hayle operational twelve months of the year. As time went by a lof of the growers were becoming a bit disillusioned with their existing marketing agent. With the help of Andy Izzard visiting the growers and telling them about AMS, the whole group joined up in the spring of 2001 and have never looked back.

It wasn't until the autumn of September 2000 that AMS started to take fruit out of Cornwall and by the time they had started their spring crop of 2001 all the growers were on board. By 2002 90 tonnes of class one came through AMS. All growers send their fruit to a central point, that being the facility of John and Tricia Hosking. here the fruit is cold stored and QC'd with the help of John's son Neil prior to collection and transportation up to the AMS central packing facility at Evesham.

As with other producing areas, Cornwall has been involved in the ASDA local store initiative. For the first time this year during the periods of May/June we have supplied the three ASDA stores direct in Cornwall. They being Bodmin, Falmouth and St Austell. All fruit was supplied with the ASDA strawberry lable along with a secondary flash label, incorporating "locally grown". Deliveries were made three time s a week, through a local haulier called David Gillman on his refrigerated lorry, on several occasions extra deliveries were made as stores were running out of stick especially St Austell. All stores reported exceptional growth on their strawberry sales - St Austall for instance complimented the display by highlighting Cornish clotted cream alongside the punnets of strawberry. As the local produce theme was was such a success, this coming season we are looking to extend the deliveries to ASDA Plymouth. As we go to press we are in the process of developing a local branded label, not only for the Cornish stores but for all the other regions that are involved in local deliveries.

Spring 2003