Sir James Dyson’s high tech farming venture has turned to an East Yorkshire horticultural specialist to deliver a huge expansion in Lincolnshire.
An £11 million second phase of a successful strawberry growing operation has launched, with CambridgeHOK behind the original six-hectare glasshouse, delivered in 2020. The Newport team will add a further 4.7 hectares at the site in Carrington, where 750 tonnes of the fruit are now being produced for British consumers.
The celebrated inventor and business magnate added agricultural interests to his engineering stable, with interests in Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire too. At the site near Boston the latest technology and advanced growing systems are used to lengthen the British strawberry season, now stretching from early spring and into late autumn.
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Patrick Harte, joint managing director of CambridgeHOK, said the new contract is the result of the businesses working in partnership for the past four years on the original project.
“We’re thrilled to be adding this significant extension to what is already an amazing facility for Dyson Farming in Lincolnshire,” he said. “There can be no better endorsement of the success of that project than the owners expanding on such a large scale just a few years later. It is an endorsement of the quality of our work in terms of planning, designing, and building the facility, but perhaps even more importantly, the quality of the fruit being grown by the Dyson Farming team.
“We have worked very closely with Dyson Farming since the initial build to refine and continually advance the growing environment, helping to increase efficiencies and expand the growing period, making the highest quality British grown strawberries available for much longer on our supermarket shelves.
“This extension will expand that supply network and ensure they are available for more customers in 2024.”
Construction of the new extension has begun, with a target completion date, and planting of the first strawberry plants, scheduled for December.
The state for the art site utilises a swinging hanging gutter system, and heat and power from the adjacent anaerobic digestion plant, allowing the use of LED grow lights when needed to support plant growth. In addition it has a packhouse and cold store facilities allowing the team to pick, chill, pack and deliver fresh fruit to the end customer as quickly as possible.
