When it comes to meeting the demand for homegrown apples, pears and soft fruit, planting tens of thousands more trees is only half the story.

When those trees produce the fruit that supermarkets and UK customers are demanding, the harvest creates its own demand – for quality storage facilities that can keep the fruit in tip-top condition all year round.

For a leading grower and packer like FW Mansfield & Son, which is committed to running a sustainable operation with short supply lines and an absolute focus on quality fruit, that means investing in building new cold stores alongside planting new trees.

And when it comes to commissioning buildings of the right quality, F W Mansfield & Son turns to a supplier who has been involved with the long-established family business for decades and who shares the same values, ambitions and eye for detail.

Graham Elgar, who heads up Ashford, Kent-based G J Elgar Construction Ltd, has played a major part in the ongoing building work at Nickle Farm, just outside Canterbury, that has taken place since founder Buddy Mansfield bought the site as the headquarters of his growing business in 1994.

Over the past 30 years, the growth has been impressive, and F W Mansfield & Son, now headed up by Buddy’s son Paul, stores, grades and packs fruit for 31 other growers as well as handling its own 27,000 tonnes of home grown apples and pears each year. The combined total packed and distributed from Nickle Farm is roughly double the home-grown tonnage.

“We have to expand our storage facilities as well as planting new trees,” explained commercial operations manager Dave Slaughter. “If there’s nowhere to put it, there’s no point growing it.”

With Paul Mansfield committed to reducing food miles and the company’s own carbon footprint by centralising the operation on one site, that means any new building has to take place at Nickle Farm, which made life challenging for Graham Elgar and his skilled workforce when they took on the current project.

“It took a lot of planning, communication and liaison to deliver 19,300 square feet of new cold store in the middle of what was already a busy site, with dozens of lorry movements in and out every day,” he explained. “It was vital that we didn’t get in the way of any of the Mansfields vehicles as they were all on time-critical deliveries, either in to or out of the complex.”

The planning that made sure the project was delivered smoothly reflected not just impressive coordination and information sharing but a mutual respect. “It’s true that my operation here can’t stop, but at the same time Paul has entrusted Graham with the task of building the stores and I need to make sure he can get on with it,” Dave Slaughter added.

The new coldstore, due to be finished in mid-October and, as Dave pointed out, “in use within a couple of days of the handover”, is just the latest in a long run of new storage and packing facilities that are keeping F W Mansfield & Son at the top of the fruit growing and supply business in the UK.

“We are certainly one of the top two growers of top fruit in the UK by volume, and if you include all fruit then I suspect we would be the biggest,” Dave confirmed.

That growth has seen the company invest somewhere around £23m over the past six years, not just in planting trees – 180,000 in 2022/23, with a similar number expected to be planted this season – but in the cold stores that keep them supermarket -ready from harvest through to the following summer.

The Nickle Farm site already boasted 98 cold stores in seven buildings when G J Elgar Construction was contracted in November 2023 to demolish a 20,400 sq ft building in the heart of the site and replace it with the smart new, controlled atmosphere stores due to be unveiled in a couple of months’ time.

The first issue was moving a portable building which also encroached on the footprint of the new building but which was a vital part of the seven-days-a-week operation at F W Mansfield & Son. Graham solved that issue by bringing in a crane and a low loader and moving the whole unit, “lock, stock and barrel” across to its new site.

From that point on it has taken Graham’s considerable organisation and liaison skills to deliver the project. While he has worked on virtually all of the buildings currently on the site, this is the first scheme at Nickle Farm which G J Elgar Construction has been asked to project manage from start to finish.

“Clearly a building of this scale involves an awful lot of deliveries and traffic movements, not to mention the actual construction workers doing their thing,” said Graham. “At one point we had 24 lorries pouring concrete to complete the floor slab.”

That wouldn’t be a problem on a green field site, but at Nickle Farm, which can have 14 inbound deliveries and as many as 30 lorries leaving the distribution centre in a single day, the building work had the potential to get in the way of the day-to-day operation – and that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

To keep things running smoothly, as well as regular face-to-face communication, Graham sent chief executive Lee Port, Dave and other senior members of the team a weekly email detailing what would be happening that week and making sure there were no surprises.

“We had to make sure that if we were going to be blocking a loading bay, for instance, Mansfields had enough warning so that they could make sure there was enough produce the other side of the blockage to allow the outbound deliveries to carry on,” said Graham. Nodding in agreement, Dave pointed out: “If we aren’t able to service the customer, we won’t be putting up any more new buildings.”

G J Elgar Construction was also responsible for health and safety issues relating to the new building, something which became clear during a tour of the site which saw Graham continually insisting on the right walkways being used.

The result of G J Elgar Construction’s considerable efforts is an impressive modern coldstore housing 12 dynamic controlled atmosphere stores and capable of holding 9,400 bins of fruit. It will take the total number of stores on site to 110.

While taking a strategic overview of the work and leading on the liaison, Graham brought in Nick Field of N Field Projects Ltd as the on-site project manager responsible for co-ordinating the teams involved in bringing the building to fruition.

“With over a decade of experience managing similar projects like the cold stores and having previously worked with Mansfields and all the contractors involved, Nick was the obvious choice to help me liaise with the different teams and oversee the technical details,” commented Graham.

Nick added: “With a tight programme to deliver the fruit stores ahead of this year’s harvest, getting the design finalised and signed off by all contractors was key to making a swift start on site.

“Refining stores and plant room layouts to allow adequate space for all the plant and machinery as well as making allowances for pipe runs and additional supports for coolers, pumps and chillers all needed to be expedited so that we could get the steelwork to site as early as possible.”

Nick used his in-house CAD (computer aided design) capabilities to set out the details for signing off by the contractors, meaning changes were done in good time ahead of steel production and allowing the workforce to keep to the ambitious programme.

“As we worked through the build programme, G J Elgar Construction was able to prioritise the areas that would allow the other contractors to start on site soonest, meaning the finish dates would be achievable and delivering what the client needed in good time,” he went on.

Graham’s team completed the groundworks for the building, which is dug into the ground by several metres at the back to keep the profile low and reduce its visual impact, and then erected the steel frame and cladding, concrete retaining panels, perimeter drainage and power-floated floor.

The controlled atmosphere stores themselves are being installed by W D Hobden, a well-experienced family business now led by Lee Hobden following the recent death of his father, the founder Bill Hobden. Lee, who set up the business with his father 32 years ago – although his father had been working in the field for many years before that – now works alongside brother Gary and a talented team of installers.

W D Hobden has also worked at Nickle Farm before and has built up an enviable reputation for delivering quality controlled atmosphere stores. “It’s always good to work with Graham as we share his focus on quality, and the project has gone smoothly and according to plan,” said Lee.

CA Services will be installing the CO2 scrubbers, Orchard Cooling will be responsible for the refrigeration and the vital electrical work that will join all the dots is in the safe hands of P J Electrical.

Once the stores are complete and commissioned, it won’t take long to fill them, as Dave Slaughter explained. “With the increased capacity we will be able to store 60,000 bins on site, but we are likely to bring in about 78,000 in total,” he said. “That means we will be storing 18,000 bins for the short term, delivering them to the supermarkets for the start of the season and then using that space again for long-term storage.”

F W Mansfield & Son supplies virtually all of the household name supermarkets, with just two of the better-known names currently shopping elsewhere for their fruit.

It reflects a massive demand, the quality of the product and an impressively slick operation, with technology at the heart of it. “Our fruit is picked into a bin, and from that point on it is not touched by a human hand until the customer gets it home and unwraps it,” Dave explains.

That focus on mechanisation is why F W Mansfield & Son now has two automated grading lines which use the latest technology to scan every single apple, taking photographs from every direction and checking for flaws both inside and out in a fraction of a second before grading it, sizing it and sending it on its journey to the supermarket shelf.

It’s faster, more reliable and removes the need for the manpower that has become increasingly difficult to recruit in recent years. “We now have five people on our grading lines, including the quality control person,” said Dave. “They can grade 300 bins in 12 hours. In the past we had 25 or 30 people inspecting half as much fruit by eye and not doing it anywhere near as well.”

Managing director Peter Kelly, of suppliers Kent Fruit Services, explained: “F W Mansfield’s GREEFA Combisort is able to delicately handle a number of products, principally apples and pears. It sorts the fruit by size, weight and colour but also checks for external defects, with the iQS Performance system able to effortlessly identify and reject fruit based on specifications decided on by Mansfield’s skilled operators.

“Our submerged filling unit is the gentlest of ways to refill bins with product and is second to none in this regard. Kent Fruit Services and F W Mansfield & Son have been working together seamlessly for decades.

“We provide them with machinery and engineering services, and the fruitful relationship has expanded in recent years with the installation of the GREEFA Combisort pre-sizing line and multiple BURG packing lines for a wide range of options but predominantly flow wrapping.

“Most recently a big push for automation has culminated in a large palletiser project, with fruit going from bin to pallet with almost no human input. F W Mansfield’s insatiable desire for progress and efficiency has more projects on the horizon which Kent Fruit Services and our partners BURG Machinery and GREEFA are excited to make a reality.”

Quality standards at F W Mansfield & Son are driven not just by Paul and the team’s own desire to pick and pack the best fruit but by the supermarkets, which continue to demand the right accreditations and are looking to growers to help them achieve their goal of reaching ‘net zero’ by 2035.

It’s a challenge that F W Mansfield & Son is taking seriously, with solar PV mounted on roofs across the complex in numbers that don’t just boost the company’s green credentials but which make a considerable difference to its energy bills.

With around 3.4MW of solar PV due to be generating energy across the site, the company is the fifth biggest independent solar power generator in the country and uses everything it produces to keep the cold stores and packing lines running.

“We are reducing our carbon footprint year on year and we invest a lot of time and thought in reducing our impact on the environment and moving towards being fully sustainable,” said Dave. “That’s why the operation is essentially centralised here at Nickle Farm, with just a single satellite operation a couple of miles down the road at Chartham.” The centralised model means fruit is stored, packed and then distributed from the same site, without the need for multiple journeys.

The extensive investment in solar PV energy at Nickle Farm has, since 2022, been carried out by Harvest Green Developments, which has provided 540kW of solar energy on two buildings as well as taking over the management of all the renewable energy assets on site.

“To date there is more than 2.4MW of solar PV at Nickle Farm and the team has ambitions to install significantly more over the years to come,” explained Harvest Green Developments’ business development director James Clifford.

“A major challenge at Nickle Farm to growing the amount of renewable energy on site has been the UK Power Networks export limits that are prevalent in this area, alongside the three mains supplies that feed various parts of the site.

“To manage the assets efficiently, we have installed metering across every import/export supply, as well as on every generating asset, so that we accurately detail what energy is being utilised on site and where it is being fed from, and therefore the energy savings being achieved.” The rooftop installations comprise Trina Solar modules, Solis inverters and K2 Systems mounting kit.

“We are proud to have supported FW Mansfield & Son with their Solar PV installations as it marks a substantial effort towards decarbonising Nickle Farm and substantially reducing their running costs,” added James.

While F W Mansfield & Son is a major player in the world of fruit, it retains a family business feel, and the influence of Buddy, who set up the forerunner to the Nickle Farm operation, a greengrocers in Romford, Essex, in 1942, is still keenly felt.

Buddy’s entrepreneurial skill saw the business grow steadily and he went on to buy a smallholding in Dargate, a farm in Broad Oak, Canterbury and, in 1994, Nickle Farm. Three generations of the family are now involved in the business.

The company likes to employ from within, a policy that has seen Lee Port, who first worked for F W Mansfield & Son in London as a barrow boy at the age of 15, sitting in the chief executive’s chair some 46 years later. Craig Rook, who heads up the farms team that is responsible for growing all F W Mansfield & Son’s fruit, has been with the company for 30 years and is an integral part of the business.

Alongside 27,000 tonnes of top fruit, which includes Pink Lady, Jazz, Gala, Braeburn, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Bramley and Cox varieties, the business began growing strawberries and cherries five years ago and now produces 2,200 tonnes of the former and 850 tonnes of the latter each year. It also packs fruit from overseas to meet demand.

It is no surprise to learn that the cold stores about to be commissioned won’t be the end of the story for F W Mansfield & Son. As Dave Slaughter pointed out: “If you don’t invest in the future, you won’t be part of it.”

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