History of Haygrove

Haygrove was begun as an agricultural degree project on a rented hectare in 1987 by Angus Davison, growing strawberries using a technique which was at that time new.

Over the following years, area and breadth of activity grew to what is now ~200 hectares of various high value crops and the sale to over 30 countries of innovations developed mainly on it's own farms. Haygrove now employs over 300 full time people. Consistent themes have been:

Constantly seeking technical step change in methods, ideally initiating it, but at least identifying it early and being there.
Trying to create exciting opportunities for winning individuals rather than recruit people for jobs. More than most, the business deliberately builds around the talents and dreams of it's core people.
Always working hard on our vision of the future (sometimes too much!), launching the next new activity whilst still hopefully on a high from the last.
The expression "he or she is a Haygrove person" has emerged. It means a highly committed, passionate, trustworthy, extremely resilient, relatively self sufficient, ideas person, who likes to get things done rather than talk about it.
A notable character of the business is that many senior positions are held by people who arrived as humble fruit pickers. A number have gone on to become successful partnerships, which themselves now lead in their sector in their home country (e.g. South Africa and Poland).

Though not an objective, Haygrove has accumulated a number of mainly technical firsts. These and a potted company history are shown on the right.

History

1987 - 1ha of strawberries. First drip irrigated polythene bed berry production in West of England
1992 - Haygrove 'Britamark' - Farming begun in Hungary
1993 - First Spanish tunnels into UK
1995 - Tunnel business commenced (now Growing Systems)
1996 - Haygrove Development begun. Supported 1ha integrated farming training centre in Capiz, Philippines
1997 - UK Soft Fruit Grower of the year award
1998 - Haygrove Poland - manufacturing partnership started (now 3 factories)
1999 - First organic strawberries in UK to supermarkets (now supply 90% of UK organic soft fruit to smkts)
2001 - Haygrove Sidlesham - fruit partnership (2ha start, highly successful, now spawning it's own partnerships)
2002 - Haygrove Heaven - South African fruit partnership (1ha start, now 60ha, with own social development activity)
2002 - UK Oriental Lily enterprise begun
2002 - Telescopic Tunnels - global patent (now 50% of our tunnel sales)
2003 - International Trade Award winner (for export)
2003 - Strawberry harvesting rigs - global patent (now ready for export)
2004 - GIG - Gambia Is Good commenced (not-for-profit marketing company)
2005 - Halo Mobile portable livestock buildings (now housing 1mn birds)
2006 - UK Organic Farm of the Year Bronze Award and Organic Product of the Year Silver Award (Soil Association)
2007 - First UK organic lilies (sold as Plan A by Marks & Spencer)
2007 - 'Bright Futures' social upliftment project began in South Africa
2008 - 20 Growing System Agents around the world
2008 - An awful year for soft fruit in the UK (and banks!)
2009 - First UK organic cherries
2010 - Haygrove uses knowledge and techniques from field scale commercial tunnels and growing, for a home garden polytunnel, launching Garden Tunnels.

Sorry, translations missing

History of Haygrove

History