UK Apple Growers Unite to Share Harvest-Saving Strategies

Five of the UK’s most experienced commercial apple growers are joining forces to share the practical methods they use to improve harvest efficiency, protect fruit quality and manage increasingly complex workforce demands.

The British Apples & Pears Limited Smart Orchard Harvest Optimisation Grower Workshop, taking place on 31 July, will bring together representatives from five leading fruit businesses for an open discussion covering every stage of harvest planning and delivery.

The panel will feature James Simpson of Adrian Scripps, Ross Goatham of AC Goatham & Son, Tom Hulme of ACH Farming, Mark Gaskain of Gaskains Ltd and Prime Produce, and Robert Hinge of A Hinge & Sons.

Among the subjects under discussion will be labour planning and picker productivity, pre-harvest thinning, fruit maturity assessment, harvest timing, orchard equipment and technology, fruit quality, workforce supervision and the use of digital tools.

Ahead of the workshop, the growers have also collaborated on two practical publications for BAPL members.

Harvest Optimisation: Learning from Five Leading UK Apple Growers compares the different approaches used by the five businesses to plan and deliver their harvests.

A complementary Harvest Optimisation Best Practice Guide distils the common themes emerging from their experiences into ten recommendations intended to improve efficiency, fruit quality and workforce management.

Ali Capper, executive chair of British Apples & Pears Limited, said one of the industry’s greatest strengths was growers’ willingness to learn from one another.

While every orchard operates under different conditions, Capper said there were shared principles capable of improving efficiency, quality and financial returns across the sector. Capturing that knowledge would allow the wider industry to benefit from decades of practical experience.

Workshop participants will receive both publications, which will subsequently be made available to BAPL members.

The initiative comes as British top-fruit businesses continue searching for ways to increase productivity and control costs without compromising the quality of the crop reaching consumers.