Fullwell Mill

Fullwell Mill is a leading UK Fairtrade food manufacturer that produces food products under licence for major UK brands and supermarket chains and manufactures and sells products under its own “Tropical Wholefoods” brand. The Company has an established and successful association with Fruits of the Nile in Uganda, bringing a range of dried fruit products to the UK produced by well organised small scale farmers (see Youtube video below). This project is testing and developing the production of dried berry fruits in Uganda, which represent a great opportunity for new, high value products with a significant market demand.

Garden Organic has been working with Fullwell Mill to identify suitable cultivars of all the target berry-fruit products.  Large batches of seedlings were created, cleaned and shipped to Uganda in March 2010.  These berries are currently planted on 10 trial sites each with multiple seedlings at locations with different agro-ecological soil and weather conditions to see which are most suitable and whether organic production is feasible.  Several of these 10 trial sites will become nursery sites for the production and distribution of seedlings to farmers for commercial cultivation and test-drying.  To support this process, Fullwell Mill has been working with local farmers to train them on relevant berry farming techniques learning from large-scale berry fruit operations in South Africa. 

Despite very difficult weather conditions with prolonged drought for most participating farmers, great progress has been made towards learning what berries and varieties have good potential for Uganda. While work will continue with farmers on blueberries and raspberries, it is already clear that their development will be slow and there will not be an immediate rapid growth in cultivation. In the case of strawberries, there is potential and farmers are keen to expand. It is likely that they will focus on supplying the local market for fresh stawberries initially. There are technical issues emerging on developing a good quality marketable sun dried strawberry. However, trials will continue.

The largest impact will come from Cape Gooseberries (Physalis). These are growing extremely well and farmers are already keen to substantially expand production. They dry well and samples taken to Europe immediately triggered interest and substantial orders to the extent that Fullwell Mill have decided to promote production with farmers with additional support (advice and solar driers).