Global production for reliable sourcing, all year round

New planting at Polana,
New plantings at Bush Valley, Lushoff and Melwood.

Hectures and Varaties.

Polana starts packing the final product, blueberries, directly into Polish retail customers, working with fruit from Peru, Chile, Spain, and Morocco.

Polana purchases a second Unitec optical grader,
PNT also purchased a Unitec Optical grader,

This was a packhouse started in the North in the Tzaneen area, which was then moved
down to the south at Dreampack in 2022 in a new purpose-built facility.
Winterwood also buys its first Unitec Optical grader.

Bush Valley Berries was also started in the same area, 20 mins from Kruger berries in the Tzaneen area.

Polana build large modern state of the art facility at Żelimucha farm, 4500m2 complete with new offices, back on loading bays, new packhouse, Blast chilling and Controlled Atmosphere and Freezer storage.

Polana also invests in a new Unitec Optical blueberry sorter.

Winterwood buys its own farm up in Tzaneen, called Kruger Berries (60 hectares).

Winterwood becomes a founding member of South African IP company Cape Varietal Group, CVG secures the license for Mountain Blue Orchards (MBO) varieties for the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa. MBO varieties include Masena, Dazzle, Splash, Echo, Eureka, Eureka Sunrise, Eureka Maxx & Eureka Dawn.

CVG now sublicences to almost 40 growers of which Winterwoods own farms are the largest.

Winterwood takes a 25% share in a Tzaneen Berries in the North of South Africa, Looking at earlier sites to spread our location around S. Africa to extend the season.

1st Fair Trade source in the world (RSA grower in our group).

Melwood fruits gets into the Guinness Book of Records by growing the Worlds heaviest blueberry at 9.82g, this was then beaten by Polana’s Ochoza Organic Farm with 11.28g the next year.

Two more packing lines, one with the first Top Sealing machine – twin lane Ishida model capable of 140ppm, the fastest on the market at the time.

Winterwood purchases large cooling / Storage facility which was later developed to include a grape packing operation. The operation secured contracts with 7 other local table grape producers to cool and distribute their fruit, with a guaranteed throughput of at least 7,000 pellets per season.

Winterwood opens their new Packhouse.  First automation with 2 full packing lines with Metal detectors – another first for Winterwood in the UK, being the first ones used on a soft fruit packing line.

Winterwood starts a new polish farm project with 25% shares at PNT, another large blueberry farm in the Southwest of Poland. Later Winterwood acquired a further 25% and PNT joined the Polskie Jagody Producer Organisation group, which it helped to form with 4 other smaller local growers. Another 120 Hectures planted,

Winterwood buys Polana consisting of 2 farms in the North-West of Poland with a total of 300 Hectares land only 120 ha planted and is now at over 240ha with 40ha of poly tunnels,

EVG secures the license to import University of Georgia varieties such as SuziBlue and Titan to South Africa, starting with germ plasma for quarantine.

Winterwood starts building a brand new 5000m2 state of the art packing facility on the existing Winterwood farm site,

First organic Blueberry farm in SA as well as harvesting Organic Grapes – both table grapes and wine grapes at that stage, although the wine grapes were removed in 2010 as not profitable

Almost 10 years to the day when Winterwood won its previous public enquiry, the company won a second public enquiry to build a new 5,000m2 state-of-the-art packhouse on the Winterwood site.

Winterwood becomes a founding member of South African IP company Eurafruit Varietal Group, EVG secures the license to import University of Florida varieties such as Emerald, Star, Jewel to South Africa, starting with germ plasma for quarantine.

“Terry we bought a mountain” was Steves phone call that day, 40ha planted 2002-2003, 7ha Rasps planted Nov 2002. 2ha R/c planted 2023 and B/C trialled but mainly blueberries DM gets approved for an open quarantine site to allow imports of Blueberry cuttings.

Winterwood farm becomes Winterwood Farms Ltd

Our first farm in South Africa – Melwood, where we were 40% partners with Melsetter Partnership.

First Polish Farm Ochoza – 228 Hectares Farm with own packhouse,  the farm was purchased 1998 with first 40ha planted in 2000 and now 120 ha fully organic Blueberries with over 20Hectures tunnels, Packhouse was built (refurbished) in 2004.

First blueberry farm purchased outside the UK in France called Anjou Myrtilles.

Winterwood was the first to sell mixed fruit packs to the multiples, e.g. red and blackcurrants, and 3, 4 and 6 cavity packs with different fruits in each cavity.

Winterwood won a public enquiry into the refusal of planning permission to pack other growers’ fruit.

Business developed relationships with other local growers, with 27 UK growers supplying Winterwood at the peak – mainly small growers with a few ha who had no direct route into the supermarkets. The business developed mainly with “minor” berries as the company USP and at peak there were 15 different soft fruits being sold at various times of the season.

Packhouse at Winterwood Farm finally finished after the setbacks of the 1987 “hurricane”, which at the time was modern facility but everything done by hand and the building was only 400m2. Initially only own fruit was packed.

South of England hit by hurricane force winds. 80% of all tunnels at Summerwood Farm had covers ripped off and also some structural damage. Luckily no tunnels yet at Winterwood. Major loss was autumn fruiting Raspberries at both WWD and SWD that were in their peak of picking and these were almost a complete write off. The only ones that were ever picked again were ones in “twin-skin” multi-bay tunnels that survived the night.

Such was the power of the wind, the polythene acted like sails and 30+kg lumps of concrete attached to some tunnel legs, and most of the tunnel covers that were either cut off in the night or blew away, were never seen again

Raspberries and Strawberries to start with. Frame of new farm building/packhouse erected. As a farm building, no planning permission was needed.

Situated 2 miles from Summerwood Farm on Chartway Street, this
was developed into a farm growing 16 Hectares, growing mostly raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, red, white and blackcurrants, tayberries, boysenberries and loganberries. The total farm area is 22ha and was typically growing Wheat or Barley each year as one big field with no windbreaks etc.

This was 3.5 hectares mainly growing Raspberries with first poly tunnels and automated irrigation.