“When you’ve extended your two-bedroomed bungalow so many times that there’s more extension than original property and it’s getting awkward to find your way around, it’s time to start again with a properly designed five bedroomed place that has everything where you need it.”
Sean Charlton’s metaphor is an apt one to explain the changes at Rumwood Green Farm, where work on a new 7,500 sq m packhouse and distribution building marks the next chapter in the fruit grower’s remarkable expansion.
The new building has been designed to allow Rumwood Green Farms Ltd, trading as Charltons, to consolidate its top fruit and soft fruit operation in a new, free-flowing process from chilled intake through the grading and packing lines and out via new loading bays to the supermarkets it supplies.
“It will make the operation smoother and more efficient as well as improving health and safety on the site by reducing the number of fork lift movements that are currently needed to link up the various processes,” Sean explained.
It is the latest stage in a remarkable two decades of growth for the grower and packer, which now grows much of its top and soft fruit on land it has bought or rented nearby as the controlled atmosphere stores, packing line, distribution hub, pickers’ accommodation blocks and offices take up much of the business’s original home at Rumwood Green Farm, Langley, near Maidstone.
Charlton’s now grows around 9,000 tonnes of Gala and Magic Star apples and 8,000 tonnes of strawberries, with some raspberries and cherries, on 13 sites within a five-mile radius of the farm, bought by Sean’s father Philip in 1968.
Around 1,500 tonnes of the soft fruit total is grown in heated glasshouses in Norfolk after Charlton’s bought two sites, one at Hempnall and one at Martham, in 2020 to extend its soft fruit season. “The heated glasshouses give us an extra month of soft fruit either side of our Kent operation,” Sean explained.
In a transformation that represented a significant investment, the company has now consolidated its Norfolk operation – Berries Direct Farming Ltd – on the Hempnall site, building a new, glasshouse heated by biomass boilers and a new packhouse and cold storage building to accommodate future expansion.
As the fourth generation of the growing and packing business, Sean is continually looking at ways to streamline the business, increase efficiency and provide year-round employment for a loyal workforce that he stressed played a large part in the success of the operation.
That loyalty continues with the choice of contractors carrying out the regular extensions and new building at the site, with Torran Construction having been responsible for the groundworks, drainage, concrete roadways and power-floated floors at Rumwood Green Farm over the past 20 years.
Alongside its own fruit, grown on some 1,400 acres of land, including 130 acres in Norfolk, Charlton’s packs for a number of other UK growers as well as fulfilling a number of third-party packing contracts. The business supplies most UK supermarkets, either with its own fruit or as a packhouse operation for other growers.
When he joined the family business in the early 1990s after obtaining a diploma in horticulture from Hadlow College, it owned 35 acres and rented a further 30. The farm mainly produced top fruit, with a packhouse and a few acres of strawberries to keep the operation busy during the summer.
Sean was keen to build the business around the packhouse and grow more strawberries to extend the season for the workforce, and that combination has been at the heart of the business ever since.
The first packhouse building was erected in 2003, with “extension upon extension” following in 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2018 and 2023. “As the business has grown, so we have had to add new buildings, extend others and generally work hard to keep up with the rising demand for our fruit,” said Sean.
The unintended result of the various extensions was an operation that spanned two halves of the site and meant some awkward forklift movements to bridge the various gaps in the process.
“We had extended so many times that we felt we had to regroup the top and soft fruit operation on one side of the farm to make the throughput smoother, improve safety on the site and boost productivity,” Sean explained.
“Hence the new building that will allow us to grade, store and pack top and soft fruit under the same roof, linking up with existing controlled atmosphere stores and other facilities to accommodate increasing demand and volumes.
“The pre-sizer will be moved to its new location, which is currently being used as a temporary packaging store, next summer, while the buildings being vacated by the move will be repurposed for packing other produce.”
Sean again called in Torran Construction for the groundworks, dock levellers and road building on the site. “I’ve used Torran for the past two decades and always been very happy with the quality of the work,” he explained. “They always understand what we are trying to achieve, they do a great job and they fit in with our often-tight construction windows.
“We value loyalty here at Charltons. It’s how we have built up such a great team, and it extends to our contractors as well. We turned to Torran for the groundworks ahead of the steel frame erection, for the new roadway around the site and for the complex drainage that takes the rainwater from our roofs and feeds it into a large pond before it is pumped into a reservoir and then used for irrigation.”
Sean’s “great team” includes head of farming operations James Weeks and head of packing and commercial operations Robert Amelal, who joined Charltons 27 years ago as a strawberry picker. “He came around asking for a job and caught me at an off moment,” Sean recalled. “I could easily have said ‘no’ but instead I said: ‘come back tomorrow’. He proved to be a great picker and has since moved through the ranks – always reluctantly – to become one of my right-hand men.’’
Other contractors who worked on the recent expansion included AS Buildings, which erected the steel-framed building, SCS, which provided the white walling, and Orchard Cooling, which carried out the refrigeration and electrical work.
While the current expansion is impressive, it’s clear that it won’t be the last phase, as Charltons continues to grow. “You have to run to stand still in this industry,” said Sean. “If not, you get left behind.”
