Fruit First Limited

Fruit First Ltd is a new independent venture bringing together fruit packing expertise from Great Cheveney Farms, Gaskains Packing Services, Clockhouse Farms, Worldwide Fruit and Richard Hochfeld Limited.

£7 million is being invested to build a state of the art top fruit storage, grading, packing and distribution facility in Faversham, Kent.  A further £1.5 million is being invested by Fruit First Select Ltd in building a similar facility to handle grape, kiwi and stone fruit on the same site.

Grading equipment from Greefa and Marco Systems is being installed to take advantage of the latest grading and sorting technologies to provide customers with a highly efficient, effective service.  This technology will allow us to ensure that all produce exceeds the quality expectations of our customers while maximising the usage of the fruit and the returns to the grower.

A fully automated pallet storage and handling facility is being installed by Univeyor which optimises the usage of space and handles all produce far more efficiently than traditional methods.

Sitting above all this technology will be a Prophet IT system.  This system will effectively control all movements within the site whilst providing management with real time information to allow efficiencies of operation to be maximised at all stages of the process.

This will be the largest single investment in the UK top fruit industry for some years and provides us with a platform to provide our customers with improved quality and service whilst increasing efficiency and maximising crop usage and grower returns.

The Fruit First Select facility was opened for business in April 2007 with Fruit First's packing operation to follow shortly after in July.  All facilities will be operational by August 2007.

For more information on employment or the services we will be able to offer please go to our contacts page.