The Dover district has a strong tradition of food production. With its excellent transport links and logistics networks, the Dover district is home to a number of high-tech food production and processing companies. The Port of Dover is one of the UK’s leading ports for the import of fresh produce with over 825 million loose bananas – a quarter of all UK bananas - and 10 million melons and pineapples discharged at Dover annually for distribution to UK supermarkets. This port trade is handled by George Hammond PLC.
The Bakkavör Group is a leading international food manufacturing business, specialising in the supply of fresh prepared foods. In the UK, Bakkavör is market leader in 12 of the 16 product categories they supply. Their customers include the UK’s leading supermarket chains who sell Bakkavör products to consumers under their respective retail brands.
Tilmanstone Salads operates from a 10,500m² facility producing a range of bagged leafy salads and vegetables. The company employs 600 people in Tilmanstone.
APS Salads is one of UK’s leading suppliers of tomatoes and is the biggest supplier of tomatoes to Tesco. In 2010, the Cheshire based company brought the Europa Nursery at Ash, near Dover. In 2013, the company invested £3.7 million to expand production at the Europa Nursery, doubling the size of the state-of-the-art production facility to 57,000 square metres and creating 80 new jobs. Founded in 1949, the business is still family run, and produces over 50 million packs of tomatoes each year.